


Interludes

by Abbie



Series: Long Way Down [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Captivity, F/M, Gen, Kidnapping, Team Arrow, Team as Family, Those Left Behind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 27,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3396281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbie/pseuds/Abbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the moments between, dynamics between Tommy and Felicity ebb and flow as information, alliance, and power shift. At home in Starling City, Oliver struggles with Felicity’s disappearance and Team Arrow must find a new footing, while pieces they cannot see fall into place around them.</p><p>Updated: Oliver, Diggle, and Roy go to bring Felicity home at last—and find far more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Absolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were prompts filled on Tumblr, and I decided to go wild with this one and check in with Oliver back in Starling, six weeks after Felicity has been taken.

Interludes & YNAF(NYN) [Reading Guide](http://absentlyabbie.tumblr.com/post/140662772058/long-way-down-a-reading-guide)

 

There are a great many sins Oliver has committed in his life.

There is blood on his hands and there are demons in his shadow, in his mind, in his nightmares, and he has created them and earned their torment.

He spent years killing to survive, and years after that, killing and torturing and and fighting on _orders_ , because he was good at it. He has cost people their loved ones, their secrets, their livelihoods, and so much more.

And so much worse.

He has done _terrible_ things.

He has done—and become—horrors.

And now he spends his days and nights atoning. Trying to right a balance that can never be evened—but the trying is necessary anyways.

But it has been six weeks since the frantic, sickening day when Felicity vanished, disappeared without any trace whatsoever. No sign of struggle in her home, no note left, no ransom demands, no threats.

She left the foundry dead on her feet, headed to her townhome to get some much needed sleep—and it’s been _six weeks_ since Oliver has seen her.

If he’d known that would be the last time—

It’s been one month since Felicity was officially declared a Missing Person.

Oliver could go the rest of his life without reliving that first conversation with Donna Smoak—but he doesn’t think he ever will.

Oliver has committed _many_ sins in his life, and he has been sorry for so much, regretted endlessly.

When—not if, _when_ —he finds whoever took Felicity Smoak, when he gets his hands on the people responsible…

There are some monstrous deeds for which Oliver will never seek absolution.


	2. Food

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is nothing here without strings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr.

Felicity would have killed a man for a slice of pizza.

An order of french fries. A Big Belly Burger special with the works and a strawberry milkshake. Sweet and sour chicken over fried rice and egg rolls from the little Chinese dive a block over from her house. Ice cream.

Instead she sat on her little mattress with the tray that had been slid through the slot in her door for lunch, and picked at apple slices, potato chips, and a ham and cheese sandwich with a slightly wilted leaf of lettuce on it.

They had taken in the last two weeks to including with her midday meal a tiny, collapsible paper cup with a pair of gummy vitamins. She was probably not getting enough vitamin D locked away in this sightless hole.

With an abrupt beep, the door opened and Felicity stared as Tommy strolled through, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved v-neck T shirt in a _mockingly_ familiar shade of green. The color looked cruelly good on him.

"Tommy," Felicity murmured in wary, confused greeting. He almost never visited at mealtime.

He smiled at her blandly and moved to the table. He reached for the chair like he would move it towards the bed but quickly dropped his hand, head shaking with a rueful smirk, as if he’d just remembered it—like everything in this cell—was bolted to the floor. Instead, he turned towards her. “Scoot over.”

Felicity hesitated, thought about being difficult. But instead she sighed and shuffled closer to the foot of the bed, hands clutching her tray, food still mostly uneaten. She just didn’t have the fight in her today. “What are you doing here?”

Tommy dropped heavily onto the bed beside her, grinning as she nearly fumbled her tray and glared at him. He slouched back, shoulders hitting the wall as he casually laced his fingers together over his stomach. “Just checking in. It’s been a busy week.”

Felicity picked up her sandwich, rolling her eyes heavily. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He chuckled and she bit bit a little viciously into her sandwich, grimacing at the revoltingly familiar flavor of ham and cheese sticking to the roof of her mouth. She almost thought that the League was lucky she wasn’t a practicing Jew and didn’t keep Kosher, but the reality was they were probably well aware. Just as they knew her contacts prescription, her dietary needs, her allergies, her birth control schedule.

She wanted to spit the sandwich out, sick with the thought of how much of her life they’d pawed through and invaded.

But she swallowed. Took another bite.

She ate because the weakness of hunger wouldn’t do her any favors in here. Not one.

And she didn’t trust them not to force a tube down her throat if she attempted any sort of starvation protest.

But if— _when when_ when—she got out of here, she was never, ever eating another ham and cheese sandwich for as long as she lived.

She stared at her tray as she mused bitterly—and then Tommy’s long fingers broke her vision, reaching in and snatching a potato chip. Her head whipped up and she gaped at him incredulously as he popped the chip into his mouth and crunched. “Really?”

Tommy shrugged and grinned with closed lips as he chewed. Swallowing he, teased, “What, you can’t share?”

Felicity narrowed her eyes at him viciously. “They barely feed me as it is, almost the exact same thing every day, and you, _you_ —who can come and go as you please, run through a drive-thru and indulge in fast food or go to a fancy restaurant and get _real food_ —you’re _stealing my chips_?”

Tommy laughed—surprised and a little rueful—and reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Well, when you put it like that, it is kind of a dick move, isn’t it.”

She pursed her lips. “It really is.”

He sat up and smirked. “Here, let me make it up to you.”

He leaned back against the wall again and lifted his hips off the bed to dig into his jeans pocket. Felicity leaned away, curious but cautious. “What the hell are you doing?”

Quickly sticking his tongue out at her, he pulled his hand free, fingers curled into his palm, and sat up straight again. “Well, I was gonna give you this to make us square, but if you wanna be like _that_.”

Felicity rolled her eyes and set her lunch tray on the mattress beside her. Snatching hold of Tommy's wrist, he playfully resisted just a little as she pried up his fingers. She held his wrist in one hand, his fingers open in the other, and stared in surprise at what lay on his palm. “Is that—?”

Tommy huffed in amusement, joggling his hand slightly. “It’s just a chocolate, Felicity. You want it?”

Eyes wide, her gaze flew to his face, searching, but there seemed to be no cruel ultimatum lurking in his expression. Licking her lips, she slowly released his wrist, fingertips ghosting over the skin of his palm as she carefully lifted the little individually wrapped Andes mint from his hand.

Suddenly, her heart began racing and she couldn’t unwrap the little candy fast enough, mouth watering at the sight of the dark chocolate and pale green layer of mint. Felicity hesitated barely a second before popping the whole, small chocolate into her mouth.

The flavors hit her tongue—bittersweet chocolate, a cool, sugary rush of mint, rich and _delicious_ —and Felicity’s eyes rolled closed, a whimpering groan muffled in her throat as the chocolate began to melt and coat her mouth.

"Wow," Tommy laughed. "That good, huh?"

Felicity flushed, eyes opening as she ducked her head and looked sideways at Tommy. She said nothing, though, savoring the traces of chocolate and mint on her tongue for as long as possible.

Tommy’s smile was unexpectedly soft, almost kind. “Are we even now? For the chip.”

Helpless to the upward tugging at the corners of her lips, Felicity nodded. Swallowing the last traces of the candy reluctantly, she murmured, “Thank you.”


	3. Playing, Player, Played

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr by shipreally, who asked "How much does Tommy really know about the people currently employing him?" 
> 
> Takes place between Chapters 5 and 6 of You're Not a Friend (No, You're Nothing)

Felicity glanced at the card Tommy had placed on the face-up deck and selected her own two of diamonds to match it. Keeping her tone casual, she asked, “How much do you even know about the League, Tommy? About what they want from me?”

He didn’t raise his eyes from his cards, sniffing a little laugh and curling his mouth in a smirk. “What’re you hoping for, Felicity?” He licked his lips, fingertips hovering over his hand, then selected a card and placed it on the deck. “That I’m being coerced? Blackmailed?”

He glanced up to meet her eyes from under waggling eyebrows. “Mislead?”

Felicity pressed her lips together, grip tightening on the waxy plastic coating of her cards. “Just wondering if I’m the only one being jerked around, maybe.”

He snorted, hand of cards lowering as he tilted his head at her, eyes hooding in patient amusement. “You know, it’s gonna get easier if you just stop hoping there’s some angle you can work here. I know what the League is. I know the plan.” He straightened, grinning at her brightly. “Let me just go ahead and assure you that I know _exactly_  what I’m doing. That I am right where I belong.”

He winked. “And so are you.”

She stared at him for a long moment, lead sinking in her stomach, and then swallowed hard and played her card.


	4. Strong Hold On My Poor Soul (Remixed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two selections from chapter 7 of You're Not a Friend (No, You're Nothing), from Tommy's perspective.

"You fell asleep."

Tommy stared at Felicity for a long, hard second, that ugly, prowling monster clawing at his chest, trying to escape out of his throat, urging him,  _Neutralize her, threat, threat, take her down, hands on throat, thumb press down on carotid, strike first, **kill.**_

Gathering himself—stuffing those murderous, violent reflexes back down to a dull, manageable roar—he blinked. Slowly, carefully, he began letting go of her wrist, one finger at a time. She would have bruises.

Sitting up, he inhaled, the cool, dry air of Felicity’s cell rushing into his lungs, crowding the cold ruthlessness down. He couldn’t quite tell if she was frightened. Her eyes were wary, lips thin, pressed pale, shoulders rigid. She stood so stupidly rock-solid stubborn, and afraid or not, she wouldn’t give an ounce of ground he didn’t fight her for.

He wasn’t up for the battle right now; exhaustion was riding his bones like a devil on his back, brutally punishing him for burning the candle at both ends. 

But he couldn’t fail. He knew he was being tested, being watched. Could he run an operation, command a base, condition an asset,  _and_ personally pursue the League’s side interest?

He could not fail.

Why was  _here_ the place he felt safe enough to let his guard down and rest? It was absurd.

He slipped the friendly mask back on with a sardonic smirk, eyes never leaving Felicity’s. “Seems I did. I am apparently not excellent company today.”

Felicity said nothing.

 _Loudly_.

He could have laughed at her; she needn’t open her mouth when that mulish jaw and the little flicker of her eyelashes spoke so clearly.

Good. She needed to keep their positions in mind. If that caused resentment and friction, so be it. The League wanted him finessing her, but there were lines  _he_  needed to remain clearly marked.

Felicity took a step back. It was less a retreat than a way to literally show him the door she’d been blocking the sight of.

Eyeing her in cool amusement—and not a little grudging approval; Felicity Smoak was so much less delicate and fragile than she looked—Tommy bent at the waist and retrieved the romance novel that had fallen to the floor. 

Rising to his feet, he maintained careful eye contact. “I think I’m going to call it a day. Mind if I borrow this?”

She arched an eyebrow at the book and shrugged one shoulder.

Smirking wryly at her stiff air of nonchalance, he tapped the book against his thigh. He was, surprisingly, enjoying the steamy romance novel almost as much as he was enjoying needling Felicity about its contents.

Of course… he had to be careful not to let that lead dangerous places.

He turned towards the door without further goodbye, and it was only when he activated the door release that Felicity spoke again.

"Tommy."

There was something low and urgent in her tone. Something heatedly persistent.

Hand curling around the doorknob, he inhaled slowly and turned his head to look back at her, raising one brow in question. He would wait her out silently. Let her pick her words.

She met his gaze with unexpected solemnity, and her piercing question unbalanced him. “Why did you fall asleep?”

He didn’t know. Or he did, and didn’t want to.

Holding her stare, he tried to communicate with just his eyes that she shouldn’t either.

He left before he could make himself any more dangerously vulnerable.

Felicity Smoak was a prisoner; she was also a trap.

—

“Did you spend a lot of time at the community center in Vegas?”

Tommy watched underneath his lashes as Felicity froze, stiffness creeping into her posture and down each limb. Such an innocent question.

Just a  _little_ pressure.

She could ask her questions, if she wanted. He would even answer them. And he would ask his own.

 _Tighten the screws_.

Finally choosing her domino, Felicity nodded, reluctance in the slow bob of her chin. “It was a safe place to be after school. Is your  _job_  finished? Or are you just taking a day off?”

Tommy smirked. She didn’t so much as waste a breath between that deflection attempt and her return volley. He wondered how aware she was that these were the opening moves of another battle. Unperturbed, he added a domino to his train with deliberate nonchalance. “I am enjoying a brief reprieve. What about home  _wasn’t_ safe after school that the community center  _was_?”

She faltered, a sharp breath and shuttering eyelids giving her away as she realized her misstep. Found the opening she had presented him as he slid the knife through with ease. 

He studied her patiently as she looked up at him, doors opening and closing rapidly behind her eyes as she more carefully chose how to answer and placed her domino, finally hedging, “That depends on the year. If this is your day off, why are you spending it here? Do they not let you out without a leash?”

Tommy raised an eyebrow at that tart question; not so in control after all. The words poised on the tip of his tongue to remind her she got only one question at a time—and he swallowed them, and the rules, too. If she wanted to break them, he could throw them out.

Exhaling to loosen his bones, get flexible for whatever this was about to become, he took his turn—tile, question, verbal knife to the ribs. Pad it first, draw her in  _close_ , give her more than she asked to take what he needs. “I work here, but I also live here. And I’ve been out nearly every night for the past two weeks. Sometimes it’s good to stay home.”

Felicity gaped at him, at his use of the word  _home_  for what she knew as  _hell_.

Tommy just shrugged; kept it casual, snuck in under her guard. Stayed there. “And I’ve told you, I like you. I like spending time with you. You’re a hell of a lot better conversationalist than the door guards.”

She shook her head in mute denial, lips compressing, and dropped her eyes to her rows of dominoes to make her choice. Tommy pulled up a knee and propped his elbow there, leaning forward, staring. Watched her wind tighter like a spring, waiting to be sprung by whatever he asked next.

Well, he would oblige that.

"Were you unsafe with your mother?"

He laid his own tile and bit back a smirk as she chewed her lip, glaring at the three/ten like it had given the order to drag her out of her sheets at home.

Felicity’s nostrils flared, tone clipped, stalling. “Not her.” She kept her eyes resolutely on her fingers as they selected and placed a domino, a soft exhale hissing between her teeth before she asked, boiling slow but high, “Does your job end when you kill your target?”

Tommy snorted. Why did she keep thinking that particular blade would make him bleed? He watched her fingers fidget and straighten her train, decided to test her conversational footwork, see how she adapted when he pulled the rug out. “You’ve asked that before, but you already spent your question. Unless things spiral drastically and terribly out of control, she lives, and will even carry on more or less as usual.” 

And she would. She’d carry on blissfully partying, constantly on a low high from the drugs she funneled through her cousin’s nightclub. She would live and forget him, and he could wash the taste of her “candy”—and her—out of his mouth for good.

Tongue pressing suggestively against his lower lip, Tommy rolled his eyes up to catch Felicity watching him.  _Strike_. “Were you unsafe because your mother  _wasn’t_ home, or because someone else  _was_?”

She surprised him. (She kept doing that.) She blew out a hard breath and hesitated, but watched her twisting fingers thoughtfully. “That again depends on the year, and in a way, is yes to both.”

The last word snapped off in her mouth as if bitten, and when he placed a domino to lead her back to steady, to comfort, she quickly followed suit.

He hadn’t expected just… honesty. Defensiveness, anger. Not the bare facts of an uncertain childhood shared on purpose.

As she assessed the growing domino maze, she turned fast again, lips twitching in a microexpression of viciousness before she flicked her gaze up to his and dropped, “When you were younger, was home unsafe when your father was there?”

How—?

 _Oliver_.

Tommy’s face drained of the friendly amusement he’d been putting on, and memories of cold, clipped, hard words, of sneering disappointment, distant dismissal— _shattering tumblers, reeking brandy, fingers like steel around his upper arm and the long green-blue-yellow-purple bars they left behind_ —punched him in the chest harder than they had in months. Years.

For one  _drowning_  second he was so much smaller, so much more afraid—but not yet as  _angry_ —and he heard his own voice answer hollow and rough, “Yes.”

His eyes refocused on Felicity’s face—grounding, somehow,  _reassuring_ , present—and the pity and guilt in her eyes, her mouth, roused a cruel and vicious snake in his guts.

Features drawing into hard and unforgiving lines, he softly returned her grenade. “Which of your mother’s boyfriends hurt you, Felicity?”

She flinched. Glared at him, as if she had expected him to be the gentler one. He would break her of that bad habit if it killed one of them. He cataloged her curling fists against her thighs, her straight, shivering spine.

Bitter on her tongue, cold and heavy, she answered, “I didn’t keep track.”

Tommy laughed, harsh and brittle. Did she think she was getting off so  _easy_? “That’s not how this game is played, Felicity. Answer with a lie, you forfeit your question.” He leaned towards her, letting a little of the empty inside show in his eyes. “How long did she let them hurt you before she finally threw them out? Did any of them ever  _look_  at you? Touch you? Did she notice?” He raised a hand towards her and she  _flinched_ —flinched, like she expected that hand to follow through with the questions and bring back past horrors, strike her just because he  _could_  because it could be  _fun_ —and god, that cracked sick through his chest, but he couldn’t falter as he asked, her medical records and pediatric x-rays clear in his head, “The fractured wrist when you were thirteen, which one gave you that?”

She knew now, the way she glared at him, eyes wetter than she’d like them to be, that the game was well past over. 

“ _That_ ,” Felicity spat, showing him the back of her wrist, “was a boy from school. My first  _boyfriend_. I broke his nose. I wasn’t going to be  _her_.” She swallowed hard and blinked furiously, and Tommy felt something go wobbly in the back of his head, begin to fall out from underneath him. “Do you ever think about the  _irony_  that you condemned Oliver as a murderer, but these days  _you’re_  the one killing people?”

Ah. Resolve.

In getting under her guard he’d let her too far inside his own.

He couldn’t keep hurting her with the same blade that cut him so deep.

And if all she could return for cruelty was a little slithering worm he had settled after the second kill, then truly. The game was over. Pushing further would break her in places he needed her unbroken—and threaten to crumble pieces of himself he’d thought still firm.

He exhaled long and slow, then sat back with a small, tight smile. “Absolutely. I also think about the time I had the chance to shoot my father in the face and couldn’t do it. I think about standing in front of him now, and pulling the trigger.”

He thought about it every single night, dreamed about it with a ravenous, hollow thirst that threatened to drink him up.

Felicity swallowed, her eyes dropping from his. She unfolded her legs and tucked her knees into her chest, looping her arms around them. She looked suddenly very small and vulnerable—vulnerable like that was a thing that was safe to  _be_  in front of him.

It was as unexpectedly touching as it was exhausting.

Tommy sighed, and she looked up at him. “The boyfriend. The one whose nose you broke. He ever hurt you again?”

"No," Felicity said quietly. She held his gaze. "Hers did, though."

Tommy squared his jaw and nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry.”

And he was. Cold and  _sorry_ , because these were the wrong screws and crueler tools than fit the hands he wanted to have. Monsters needn’t always be monstrous.

Felicity sat up straighter, eyes brightening with surprise at his sincerity, her linked hands slipping to her ankles. “Thank you.” She licked her lips. “I am, too.”

Tommy’s brow wrinkled. What the hell was  _she_  apologizing about?

"About Malcolm. You didn’t deserve that."

She spoke with conviction, and it echoed into empty chambers he hadn’t known could still resonate. But there were things you survived that could only be understood by other survivors. This was a terrible solidarity, and now he didn’t see how they could unbind themselves from it—or each other, in the understanding.

They held each other’s eyes for a long, strange moment of silent solidarity, until finally Tommy turned his attention to the abandoned dominoes between them and selected a tile to add to the end of his train.

They finished their game without any other questions.


	5. Those Who Remain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Lance pays Oliver a visit after coming across the Missing Persons report Oliver filed for Felicity Smoak.

Oliver shrugged into his motorcycle jacket, the muscle in his jaw keeping up a steady tic as he moved about the small studio apartment he’d been renting. Snatching his keys off the crate he used for a bedside table, he rounded the thin paper screen partitioning his bed from the rest of the spare space, rolling his shoulders to settle the leather jacket as he strode for the door, mind already blocks away at Felicity’s townhome, praying for some sign, some clue he missed before.

Halfway there, a hard knock cracked on the thick, black-painted wood and Oliver’s step faltered, his breath pulling between his lips, the muscles in his back bunching. Tension gripped his stomach and climbed into his chest and up his throat. 

 _Could be anybody, could be Digg, could be Triad, could be Bratva, could be cops, could be **Felicity**_ …

Pressing his tongue to his lower lip, Oliver lowered his chin, rapidly processing his exits and available weapons as he closed the distance to the door. Hand on the knob, body to the far side of the frame, he leaned in and looked through the peephole, gut churning at the distorted silver shield that took up the lens’s view just as another impatient knock rattled the wood.

Oliver blew a steadying breath through his teeth and reached up to free the chain and throw back the two deadbolts. He pulled the door open and immediately filled its space. “Captain.”

Quentin Lance nodded at him, full lips a sour twist as he tucked his badge back into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Queen.” Oliver raised an eyebrow at him and Quentin raised a wide palm. “I ain’t here for pleasantries. We need to talk.”

Oliver pursed his lips, bristling almost by reflex. “Is this a conversation I should have lawyers present for, Captain Lance? You may recall, I don’t have them on retainer anymore.”

Lance scoffed. “God help me, you’d probably just call my daughter.” Oliver blinked, and Quentin sighed. “A Missing Persons report caught my attention. Filed by you.”

Oliver’s lungs seized in his chest, his heartbeat kicking into overdrive and pounding against his sternum, flooding his veins with adrenaline. Fingers tightening on the door enough to squeak against the slick paint, he stepped carefully to one side and gestured expansively into the room. “Please. Come inside.”

Quentin Lance shuffled awkwardly past Oliver, shorn head moving back and forth as he took in the spare apartment space, from near-empty kitchenette, to the beat-up secondhand navy couch—that Felicity had helped him find and Diggle and Roy had helped him maneuver up the stairs and through the door—with its mismatched green plaid armchair and scratched up unstained-wood coffee table.

Thumb chafing at his index and middle fingers, Oliver followed Lance to the seating arrangement. Lance took the armchair, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely between them. Oliver sat on the couch and mirrored his posture.

Clearing his throat as Quentin stared at the floor and said nothing, Oliver fought back his impatience to say, “So, congratulations, by the way. On the promotion.” Quentin raised skeptical eyes to him, nodding gruffly. Oliver inhaled sharply. “And on getting out of the hospital. Laurel was… pretty worried about you for a minute there.”

Lance’s lips compressed at the mention of Laurel. “Yeah, thanks, kid, but I’m really not here for the small talk.”

 _Thank god_ , Oliver bit back, jaw clenching as he ground his molars. “Yes, you said you took note of the Missing Persons report I filed.” He swallowed roughly, nostrils flaring. “Almost two weeks ago.”

“Felicity Smoak.” Quentin dropped her name into the air like a stone—or a grenade, pin pulled. Oliver kept from flinching only by going very, dangerously still. Lance watched him with a critical eye. “She was missing four days before you reported it?”

Oliver’s jaw all but creaked, and he shifted his weight forward on the couch, gripping his knees tightly. “Three. I saw her that Friday night, and on Sunday when I _first_ tried to file a report, I was told that unless I was family, I had to wait 72 hours.” he hesitated, then finished, “Felicity doesn’t have any family in Starling.”

Quentin sat back in the chair, hands resting loosely on the arms and chin lifting sharply. “You two, you… together?”

“Does that _matter_ , Detective?” Oliver asked through gritted teeth. Lance just stared at him, and Oliver exhaled harshly through his nose, sitting back and folding his arms over his chest. “We’re friends.”

“Would you say you’re close?” Quentin followed quickly.

Oliver narrowed his eyes, running his fingernail over and over across the pad of his thumb. “Yes. I would. She’s also good friends with my former bodyguard, John Diggle. We were all together for a later dinner that Friday at Big Belly Burger, down on 5th. I believe his statement should have been included with mine on that report.” Lance just stared at him, giving him nothing, and Oliver’s brows twitched together, head tilting to one side. “Is this an interview or an interrogation?”

“Just following up,” Quentin hedged, sitting forward again, his stare hardening. “Trying to get a complete picture.”

Oliver mirrored Lance’s position, elbows bracing on his thighs. “And what exactly warrants a personal followup on a Missing Persons report from a police captain?”

Quentin’s shoulders maintained their oppositional rigidity for a moment more, and then like a tipped glass, the tension leaked out of him, leaving him slumped and looking tired and—worried. “Miss Smoak and I crossed paths a few times in the past.” Oliver waited, and Lance gruffly volunteered, “During the quake last spring, for one thing.”

Oliver exhaled, trying to visibly lower his hackles, and nodded. “She’d mentioned something like that. So, what, you’re here as a favor?”

“I didn’t say that,” Lance shook his head, scratching his jaw with one thumbnail. “She’s a good kid, I’d hate to see something bad had happened to her.”

Oliver’s gaze pulled to the floor like a magnet, a lump rising in his throat. He swallowed hard, voice rough as he answered softly, “That makes two of us.”

When Oliver raised his eyes, Lance was watching him carefully, lifting the hair on the back of Oliver’s neck. He had a sinking feeling the newly minted Captain missed perhaps less than Oliver might like, but if there was even the slimmest chance that tenacity and observational acuity could help bring Felicity home, Oliver couldn’t give a single fuck.

Quentin sighed. “You said Smoak don’t got any family in Starling. Where _does_ she have family? Has anybody called them yet?”

Oliver licked his lips, cold spreading through his heart and freezing in his gut. “Just her mom in Las Vegas. I included her contact information in the report, but whether your detectives bothered to call her, I don’t know.” Oliver’s left leg began to bounce, and he pressed his hand down on the knee, ruthlessly squashing the nervous energy. “I spoke with her last Wednesday, though. She couldn’t get a flight out to Starling til this weekend. I’m supposed to pick her up from the airport.”

Lance’s brows flickered in interest, and Oliver had to fight not to squirm in discomfort. “Well when she gets settled in here, you direct her to my precinct, alright? We could use some information from her about where her daughter might have gone, people she might’ve been in contact with, that kind of thing.”

Oliver bit down on a bark that he would know that better than Donna, partly because he wasn’t sure how true it was, and partly because the defensive urge was a little too telling. Quentin’s mouth twitched at the corner. “I’ll be monitoring Miss Smoak’s case personally, you hear me, Queen? You hear from her, or think of anything, and I mean _anything_ I might need to know to find her and bring her home safe and sound, you bring it to me immediately. Got it?”

Oliver nodded sharply, and as if on some cue, they rose together from their seats, Lance adjusting the sidearm at his belt. Hesitating only a moment, Oliver stuck a hand out to him, and Lance stared at it for barely a second before clasping and shaking it firmly. “Thank you, Detective—Captain. All that matters to me is that Felicity comes home.” Quentin went to pull his hand away, but Oliver tightened his grip, holding his eyes with deadly seriousness. “It’s the _only_ thing that matters.”

Quentin held his gaze solemnly for a long, tense moment, then thinned his lips and nodded. Pulling his hands away, he took a step backward. “That’s something I think we can agree on, Queen.”

Both men moved for the door, Oliver circling the armchair to reach it ahead of Lance and open the door for him.

Quentin paused on the threshold, tapping his hands contemplatively against his thighs as he turned to pin Oliver with a cool, assessing gaze. “You ever notice, kid, the girls you get caught up in this life of yours, they always seem to get hurt, don’t they?” Oliver’s eyes widened, drawing in a sharp breath as his grip on the doorknob tightened painfully. Lance shook his head, lips a bitter twist. “People around you don’t seem to last too long, Queen. Let’s you and I both hope Felicity Smoak isn’t another one of your casualties.”

The breath frozen in his throat, Oliver could only watch as Captain Lance turned and walked away.

Oliver’s eyes slid shut, and for a heartbeat, the panic and fear and guilt exploded in a climbing, creeping tangle in his chest, wrapping around his lungs and heart and pulling tight his shoulders and fists.

_Dad, Sara, Shado, Tommy, Mom…_

Names and faces flitted across the backs of Oliver’s eyelids in vivid, terrible flashes, at last arresting on blonde hair and bright lips. Oliver opened eyes full of steel and cold fury and stepped out the door, closing it very, very carefully and pulling his keys from his pocket to lock the deadbolts behind him.

He had a crime scene to process one more time. There had to be something, _anything_ in Felicity’s bedroom, her home, that could help him find her.

He would find her.

He would bring her home.

He would accept nothing else.


	6. Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity chafes at imprisonment and longs for home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr by padawanparent, "his sweater"

Tommy hadn’t visited in three days, and while this wasn’t the first time, the isolation was dragging on Felicity’s limbs like increased gravity. The silence was beginning to eat her alive, nibbling at the edges of her mind, sipping away at her sanity as the white walls seemed both to expand into endless nothingness even as they closed in like a coffin.

She paced from bed to wall and back, again and again, trying to keep her mind moving as quickly as her legs—trying, in the end, to keep warm as the air began to chill.

She was certain by now that the abrupt drops in temperature were on purpose.

She longed fiercely for Tommy’s suit jacket—and then viciously rejected the longing, deeply suspicious it was the point of the cold.

She didn’t want Tommy’s damn jacket.

She didn’t  _want_  to be more comfortable here.

She wanted to be  _home_.

She wanted her things. She wanted… she wanted the foundry.

Felicity sucked in a shuddering breath, near-sob, and stopped in front of the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Slowly, she knelt on the mattress, pulling up the thin, scratchy blanket and shrugging it over her shoulders, drawing it snug across her front as she curled into a ball on her side.

She shut her eyes and imagined the damp heat of the steam that poured out of the grates in the far side of the foundry—still too close to her babies for her peace of mind.

She pictured Digg and Oliver sparring on the mats, and Roy practicing with the bow.

A breeze from the vents high overhead snuck under the blanket, and Felicity shivered—shuddered—her lower lip trembling as she squeezed her eyes more tightly closed, fingers chafing at her bare arms under the blanket.

She pulled in deep, measured breaths and tried to put herself in the foundry—the meaty thud of fists, Digg grunting grumpily as Oliver landed another blow; the  _twang_  of the bowstring as Roy released, and his muttered curses as the arrow struck left of center yet again—but the cold tugged and pulled at her dream of home, ate it like acid, slow and inexorable.

Suddenly, so vividly it made her gasp, Felicity saw in her mind’s eye Oliver’s grey zip-up sweater. With a whimper, she imagined sliding into the too-long sleeves and letting the thick fabric settle around her body like an embrace. She could  _feel_  the fleece inside, breathtakingly soft against her skin, smell the faint salt and tang of Oliver’s sweat clinging to it under a layer of brisk, spicy aftershave—

—and suddenly, just for a second, a beautiful, crisp moment that squeezed her heart like a fist, Felicity was  _warm_ —

The door tone sounded overhead, and Felicity’s eyes shot open.

She sat up, shivered.

Cold.


	7. Reassurance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver seeks answers in Felicity’s home and finds none, but takes what little, temporary peace he can get from her space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by andyouweremine (alwaysaqueen)
> 
> I may have used the prompt word, er... loosely.

Oliver had, entirely without meaning to, spent three days haunting the empty rooms of Felicity’s townhome.

He had come on Thursday almost on autopilot, one more single-minded, fine-tooth-comb hunt for clues, evidence, anything.

There was, of course, nothing.

No worse than an unmade bed to indicate she’d been taken with a struggle. No note to indicate she’d left of her own free will–or under duress, but her own power. He’d logged into his own email more times in the last three weeks than the entire two years he’d been home, praying in the hollow way of the nonbeliever that Felicity had sent him a digital roadmap to bring her home.

It was strange, being here.

She was everywhere, in every room. The colors of the furniture, the paint on the walls and the pictures and posters that hung there, the books on her shelves. But she was nowhere.

No trace, no sign.

Gone.

He had slept in her home the last two nights on the ragged, desperate hope that she would walk through that front door, and he would be there to set his eyes on her. He slept on the couch, or on the floor of the living room—though “slept” was a generous word for his fitful, guilty dozing.

It was Saturday night now—pushing insistently at Sunday—and Oliver was exhausted, worn and emptied, scraped raw from the inside out with panic and fear and rage.

He stood at the top of the stairs and swayed.

Blinking rapidly, Oliver shook his head and gripped the banister hard, sucking in deliberate breaths.

Unconsciousness was chasing him, nipping hard at his heels, but Oliver wasn’t ready to surrender.

What if he slept and missed a call? What if he went home to his little studio apartment, full of its shadows which mocked him with everything that might have happened to Felicity, that might be happening to her  _right_   _now_ the longer he left her out there, to an unknown fate, and didn’t find her? What if he left and she walked through that door, and he wasn’t  _here_?

He couldn’t go.

He couldn’t sleep.

Swallowing thickly, Oliver ruthlessly squared his jaw to stifle the tremble in his chin, lifted his head and prowled down the hallway, to her bedroom.

If there was any clue—any at all—about what had happened, where she had gone, and how, he was sure it would be here. Where her heels had been untidily kicked off near the closet, but not inside it, and her clothes tossed in the general direction of the hamper—skinny jeans with one leg pulled inside out, floral-print peplum tank top hanging over the hamper’s edge, a bra (sherbet orange, yellow polka dots on the cups) tangled at the foot of the dresser—and her glasses still folded neatly on her bedside table, beside where her phone had been charging.

(It lived in his back pocket more often than his own did, now.)

Nothing else had he dared to touch. He’d first left everything intact to preserve the scene for the cops to process. But with no sign of a struggle, they’d only taken photos and DNA samples from the bathroom.

Oliver stood in the doorway and felt his face crumple—despair gnawing at his guts—as he looked over the room again. Nothing had changed. Nothing new jumped out at him. He had all but memorized the angle of the slightly ajar closet door by now.

Scrubbing his palms back over his face and into his hair, he exhaled shakily and moved further into the room.

He stopped beside the bed, where the covers had been tossed back like she’d climbed out to use the bathroom, or get a glass of water, or get up for breakfast in the morning. He leaned down just enough to brush his fingertips over the soft, deep blue linen pillowcase, and tried to imagine it dented as if her head had rested on it moments ago.

“Felicity,” he breathed, pleading with empty air.

His bones ached with weariness. His heart clanged like a bell of terror and loss, and his head echoed with it, the sound dissolving into whispers of blame and begging to higher powers and threats against imagined assailants.

He was so tired.

If Felicity were here, she would tell him he was no help to anyone like this, worse than useless. She would purse her lips at him and tell him quietly to go to bed. To get some rest.

He wasn’t sure he would find real rest until he laid his eyes on her again, set his hands on her shoulders and confirmed she was real, and whole, safe and home.

The imagining of her voice soft in his ear, Oliver sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, the sheets rustling under his weight. He sighed long and deep, bent over his knees and dropped his face in his hands.

He breathed in, a faded scent of bright citrus and tropical fruit in the lungful. He exhaled and inhaled again, his shoulders slowly slumping.

Just for a moment.

Just… just one moment.

Dropping his hands from his cheeks, Oliver toed off his boots—lined them up neatly with the bedstand—and fell backward across the bed.

Felicity’s mattress was too soft. She used too many blankets. The threadcount on the sheets was middling at best, but they were the oft-washed softness that was the exact tactile sensation of comfort.

Everything smelled like her.

He stared through the dark at her bedroom ceiling, his head empty at last of everything but her name.

Three deep breaths and one four-syllable exhale later, he slept.


	8. Sleep/less

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy dreams. Or remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by shipreally on Tumblr, "sleep"

_The restraints chafe his wrists; he jerks at them periodically, reflexively, uncontrollably. The leather creaks; the steel table rattles._

_He cannot move his head. A strap under his chin keeps his jaw shut. He bares his teeth and seethes, lips skinned back, eyes constantly darting, wide despite the blinding lights overhead._

_Footsteps. Two pairs. A scent of flowers and musk, subtle but cloying._

_He howls through his teeth, arching his back, throwing his weight at the restraints. The table jumps beneath him._

_Large hands press down on his left arm. His muscles ripple and twitch beneath, and one hand pulls away. His nostrils flare, eyes straining towards the hand he cannot see, his breath hissing rapidly, spittle flying._

_Two voices; words he cannot understand. Not yet._

_A needle presses sure and unhesitating into the flesh of his inner elbow, pushing through the skin. Cold fire erupts in the vein, chews its way up his arm._

_His throat strains as he fights to thrash, fights to scream. A smaller hand lands softly on his chest, long fingers spreading just below his sternum._

_The cold, thin edge of a blade touches the skin three inches above his navel and begins to carve._

—

Tommy jackknifed up from the bed, gasping violently. His arms swung wildly, hands tight fists, until he realized he was unrestrained and alone in his quarters at base. Still he cast his gaze in a panic around the room, lit faintly by the pale blue numbers of his alarm clock, but it was furniture and carpet, haphazardly discarded boots and a half-full laundry hamper.

No cold steel and tile, no ominously beeping machines. The bed beneath him was firm mattress instead of frigid metal. He wasn’t naked and laid out like a specimen, but tangled in his blanket, wearing the cotton pants he’d dressed in for bed.

Tommy leaned forward over his knees, lungs bellowsing, sweat cooling clammy on the bare skin of his torso. One hand buried in his damp hair, scrubbed over his face, and the other curled over his stomach.

Swallowing hard, he stared into the shadows against the far wall and pressed his fingertips over the ridges of his abs, probing for smooth, raised lines of scar tissue. He found none.

Brow furrowing tight, Tommy squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in the crook of his elbow—the phantom slide of needles into the vein prickling at his skin.

No scars, but he _remembered_ the hot, slow cut of the knife, so sharp it was just slight pressure before slicing through his flesh like butter, lighting agony that burned burned burned in its wake, his throat rough and raw from screaming behind locked teeth.

No scars.

But he remembered.


	9. Battle Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver, Digg, and Roy cope with Felicity's absence, with trying to get her back—and trying to carry on without her.

Oliver jerked awake, jackknifing upright, the knife he kept under the pillow in his hand and slashing at empty air as his heart raced and his eyes caught up with the dawning light pressing through the thin, teal blue curtains across the room.

He set the tactical blade down on the bedstand with a clatter, he sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face and into his hair. Settling his nerves to a lower thrum, he tossed back the navy sheet—probably the most somber-colored linens in the entire house—and rolled out of the too-soft bed to his feet. He retrieved a set of clothes from the duffel bag stowed under the foot of the bed, but his toiletries were already in the bathroom down the hall.

There just didn’t seem a point in taking them with him every couple days. It was easier to leave them here.

Almost two months since Felicity had vanished, and Oliver rarely slept more than three consecutive nights at his own apartment now. The nagging fear that she would come back here first and he would miss her, or miss some sign of her, some signal for help because he wasn’t _there_...

That fear dragged him back every few nights, and he had all but claimed her guest bedroom for his own. He found himself sometimes just wandering the rooms, drawing the scraps of her life and presence around him like a comfort. He’d long since given up hope of locating some new clue in her bedroom or the rest of the townhouse as to what had happened.

The police had all but given up on Felicity Smoak entirely.

Remembering that terse conversation in Captain Lance’s office clenched Oliver’s jaw with frustration and low-burning, futile anger. Quentin wasn’t a miracle worker, he couldn’t pull Felicity out of his sleeve or hat, couldn’t do anything more than he was already doing. But knowing these perfectly logical reasons did nothing to calm Oliver’s desperation for progress. For answers.

The _not knowing_ was horrible, but it wasn’t the worst of it. Or it was, if only because as long as Oliver knew nothing for certain about Felicity’s fate, every outcome he could imagine was real simultaneously.

And Oliver had the kind of experience his imagination could use to fill in every horrific, terrible detail.

That endless litany of macabre, hopeless, demoralizing detail had become a sort of endless loop running on murmur beneath every thought and moment of his day, like some kind of violent, cruel soundtrack he couldn’t turn off, and only occasionally controlled the volume of. He couldn’t quite ignore it, and it showed in the quiet current of manic energy that tightened his reflexes and refused to let his eyes or his hands settle.

So he multitasked around it, as he showered and dressed, locked up Felicity’s house, and took the Ducati across town to Big Belly.

When Oliver arrived, helmet tucked under his arm, Diggle was already seated in the back corner booth they favored, and Oliver’s lips pursed sourly to see that Digg had snagged the seat with the wall at his back and a view of the exits and room. Catching his eye, Digg’s mouth curled in faded amusement, brows flickering upward as he looked Oliver over.

Somehow, Digg just _knew_.

Standing as Oliver approached, Diggle moved into the aisle and extended his hand. Oliver took it automatically, and they tapped chests and slapped each other’s shoulders in brief greeting. To Oliver’s guilty relief, Digg gestured him into the seat he’d just been occupying. He slid into the booth with a grateful nod.

“So,” John started, settling across from him. “You living there now?”

Oliver sighed peevishly through his nose, jaw working as he glared at the scarred formica tabletop. Tapping two fingers impatiently against the surface, he asked, “Where’s Roy?”

Tipping his chin back like Oliver’d given him verbal confirmation, Diggle folded his arms over his chest and leaned back, wetting his lips. “Harper’s at the counter grabbing food. You sleep alright?”

Oliver cut him a look, unimpressed with his prodding teasing. “Do any of us sleep alright anymore, Digg?”

Tucking his lips, Digg lowered his eyes to the tabletop and nodded slowly, conceding the point. They sat in silence for a moment before Roy ambled down the aisle towards them with a burger and basket of fries on a red tray, slurping on a glass of soda in his hand. Turning his head to glance at him, John scooted a little further interior in the U-seat booth, making room for Roy to take the outer edge by the aisle.

Roy deposited his tray with a clatter, chucking his chin at Oliver in greeting as he slouched back into the seat, one hand shoved into the pocket of his ubiquitous red hoodie. Talking sideways around a mouthful of fries, Roy asked, “So, you sleeping at her place every night now or what?”

Oliver pressed his lips thin and glared at him, sitting back against the bench seat and swapping his glare to Diggle, who raised his hands in a shrug. “Hey, man, I didn’t say shit to the kid. But you don’t keep either of us around to be stupid or unobservant.”

Taking a loud slurp off his soda, Roy nodded agreement. “I’m just curious if you’re paying her rent or utilities.” He narrowed his eyes at Oliver like he was a strange and foreign lab specimen. “Like, you know those are monthly bills and they’ll shut her lights off or toss her shit if she’s past due, right?”

Oliver ran the tip of his tongue along his teeth, raising one sharp brow in irritation. “I do know how to pay bills, Roy. I even recognize those funny little small bills are _real_ money.” Roy snorted, and Oliver eased up a little on the snark. “I’ve talked to her landlord. I’ve got it covered.”

Roy continued to look skeptical as he shoved a third of a Belly Buster into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then asked around the revolting wad, “How?” He swallowed, sipping at his drink again quickly. “I mean, unless you let your own place go. Aren’t you supposed to be poor now?”

Oliver blinked at him as Digg threw his head back, laughing deep from his stomach.

Settling into quiet chuckles, John met Roy’s suspicious scowl with a pitying smile. “Kid, his version of ‘broke’ ain’t _our_ version of broke. Queen here could still afford to wipe his ass with Ben Franklin a few times a month and not really hurt much.”

“Cute,” Oliver drawled, shaking his head and turning his attention to stealing Roy’s fries. “Isabel stole the company, not the entire diversified Queen fortune. We lost some stock, several assets…” he dipped his pilfered fries in Roy’s ketchup, nostrils flaring and jaw rotating to one side. “The house. We’re downgraded, not destitute.”

Roy tolerantly let Oliver make off with his handful of fries before pulling his tray in close and hunching over it. “Then why the fuck are you living in that shithole down on Terrace if you’ve still got millions?”

John snorted softly, faking a grab for Roy’s burger just to watch him flinch. “Is it the artful slumming it or the challenge of one-man gentrification that appeals to you?”

Oliver shrugged one shoulder, chewing his fries. “Costumed vigilantism isn’t cheap. Where else was I gonna hole up, the foundry? Besides,” he swallowed, licked his lips clean, and stared at the table, humor draining away and leaving his edges sharper. “I don’t need much.”

Just her.

Roy straightened and Diggle laid his hands flat on the table, eyes on Oliver and expression sober.

Oliver met his gaze. “Has Lyla heard anything?”

Digg sighed, shook his head. “Nah, man. She’s turning over every rock she can get clearance for and more than a few she can’t, but still nothing so far.”

A muscle in Oliver’s cheek began to jump. “Just. Ask her to keep looking. Please.”

“Yeah, man,” Diggle answered mildly.

Oliver turned the intensity of his stare to Roy, who only flinched a little. “What about Sin? She hear anything on the streets? Or from Sara?”

Setting down his burger, Roy shook his head. “Still complete radio silence from our feathered friend, but Sin did say there’s been girls going missing in the Glades again.”

Oliver’s eyebrows popped high, his head shaking slightly as he leaned forward. “ _What_. And you didn’t think to _open_ with this, Roy?”

Roy scowled. “Maybe because Felicity’s not a hooker?”

Diggle’s brows tried to flee to his hairline, eyes wide and lips tucking away while Oliver leaned forward dangerously.

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Rolling his eyes, Roy tilted his head, unimpressed. “The girls that have been going missing, they’re from the Glades, most of them are prostitutes, and they’ve all disappeared in the last three weeks.” He slumped back in his seat, jaw jutting churlishly, and raised a fist to begin ticking off fingers. “These girls are either, a, being picked off by a serial killer, or b, getting sucked into a human trafficking ring. It’s real goddamn unlikely that’s what happened to Felicity.” Roy lifted his chin in challenge, his eyes burning as they held Oliver’s. “But it’s great that you care about what’s happening to these girls, and not just if they could lead you to Felicity. You’re a real hero.”

The two held each other’s stare for a long beat, while John scrubbed a hand across his mouth. Finally, Oliver sat back, shoulders deflating with a long exhale. He rubbed his hands across his cheeks, while Roy’s hot glare banked to an irritable burn.

“I didn’t know,” Oliver said quietly, lifting his gaze to Roy’s again, solemn and weary. “I didn’t know what was happening. But you’re right. I should have. I should have at least asked.”

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Roy muttered, but the sting had gone out of it. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck awkwardly. “Look, I want Felicity home too. But you’ve got all of us beating down every trail real or imagined looking for her, but it’s been two months, Oliver. Meanwhile everything’s sliding into the shitter again after the Siege. The police force is gutted by the corruption investigations, and nobody in the Glades trusts them to give a fuck anyways. We’re all there is for most of them.”

Oliver ground his teeth, his left leg bouncing rapidly under the table, his hand on his knee rubbing the pad of his thumb against his index and middle fingers over and over. “You want to just stop looking?”

Digg leaned forward, reaching a calming hand into the middle of the table. “Nobody’s suggesting that, Oliver. Hell no. We’ll keep doing everything we’re doing now, but listen.” He sighed, mouth flattening into a grim line. “We’ve hit a wall. There’s nothing more we _can_ do to look for her until something else gives. We all know our best bet for finding Felicity _is_ Felicity, but she’s not here.” Oliver inhaled sharply, dropping his gaze to the table like a stone. “We’re doing what _we_ can. And what else we can do is not drop the damn ball in the meantime.”

Nodding along, Roy chimed in, “It’s what she would w—”

“Don’t,” Oliver cut him off, soft but insistent. “Just… don’t. Please.”

He couldn’t hear those words. Not said like that.

Like she was gone.

Like it was time to start speaking of her absence as if it was permanent, and her thoughts and desires mere unknowable hypotheticals. What ifs that could never be answered.

Roy and John exchanged a glance, then nodded.

Oliver cleared his throat, deliberately stilling his leg and setting his hands on top of the table. “We’ll look into why these girls are disappearing. Our… our reach may be limited without.” He cleared his throat again. “Without Felicity. But this is something we can do.” He raised his eyes and met Digg’s, then Roy’s. “These are people we can help.”

Roy offered him a small, tight smile. “I’ll get in touch with Sin. Find out if she’s heard anything else, maybe a name to point us at.”

Oliver exhaled slowly and nodded. He could use a face to beat in.

Beside Roy, Diggle looked… quietly, sadly proud. Oliver understood.

Because Roy had been right. This was what Felicity would want. For them to keep fighting.

 


	10. These Versions of Violence (Remixed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tommy gives in and goes to visit Felicity for the first time after her seduction attempt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr by sickandtwisteddoc, who asked for a flipped POV selection from chapter 10.

As Tommy strode down the empty hallways, he still was unsure if he would only check in with the guards and the readouts, again, or if he would suck it up and go into the room. He had restricted himself to remotely monitoring her for as long as he could afford.

Four days and he still couldn’t think of going into Felicity’s cell without a monstrous surge of anger and guilt rising in his gut, tightening his hands into fists and squaring his jaw. He still didn’t know if he was madder at Felicity for trying to seduce him, for doing something so monumentally _stupid_ , so dangerous—or himself, for opening that door between them in the first place.

And the guilt… the guilt was easy to place.

He could still feel her lips against his. Still taste her mouth.

Still wanted _more_.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Tommy shook out his hand—clenched in so tight a fist the bones creaked—and pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply through his nose. It was the wanting that he couldn’t help. The _wanting_ that left him faintly sick.

Tommy had bent into many terrible shapes to fit into this second life, to belong to the League; he had blood on his hands and more on his conscience—so much he felt sure it had drowned by now—but there were lines he had to draw. _Had_ to. The League kept a strict code of honor for a reason. It structured a life so otherwise shrouded in darkness it would be madness.

And even given everything Tommy had done in the last year and a half, everything he had become… there were things that were still _wrong_.

Using Felicity for his own pleasure when he held all the power over her—even the thought nauseated him.

Tommy pulled in and released a deep breath, using it to center himself, settle his thoughts down below the surface, schooling his expression and posture to cool, firm confidence before he turned the final corner to the hall down which Felicity was kept.

The moment her cell door came into view, Tommy’s step faltered.

Only one guard stood in front of her doorway, his body blocking the entrance, staring straight ahead.

The guard did not flinch or blink or even glance in Tommy’s direction as he approached. Dread rolled like a lead ball in Tommy’s gut, and at its center burned a growing seed of fury.

“Al-Las’ah,” Tommy snapped, halting a few feet from the door, his hands loose at his sides a greater threat than the fists they wanted to form. “Why do you stand alone?”

The guard, al-Las’ah, ducked his chin slightly—jaw clenching visibly—but did not turn his head. “Merlyn. You have stayed away for some time.”

Rolling his shoulders, Tommy stepped forward, his tone dangerous. “You did not answer my question. You may not _like_ it, but you _are_ under my command as long as you are ordered to remain here. Now. Where is your partner?”

His posture tensing, al-Las’ah still did not answer. Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “ _Who_ is your partner?”

The roster had al-Las’ah assigned tonight’s duty alongside ar-Rāqiṣ, but Tommy was growing quite certain she hadn’t stepped away to relieve herself. His stride becoming a rolling prowl, Tommy moved to stand in front of the guard, a leaden coldness settling over his skin.

Al-Las’ah at last lifted his chin, his dark eyes alight with contempt and defiance as he met Tommy’s. Al-Las’ah was a few inches shorter, a little lighter. He’d only been named not quite a year ago. Even as al-Las’ah unfolded his hands from behind his back and loosened his posture, Tommy knew he could take him down with relative ease.

Al-Las’ah may have what Tommy did not, but Tommy had been burned to his ashes and remade in the League’s fire since he drew his second first breath. “Who stood with you tonight? Where are they?”

The smirk that broke al-Las’ah’s stony facade was mocking. “You needn’t worry, Merlyn. Al-Dhi’b will make sure your _pet_ does not miss you.”

Ice slipped down Tommy’s spine, his eyelids twitching wide and teeth baring. Without warning, he flashed out a hand and caught al-Las’ah by the throat, spinning on his back heel and hauling al-Las’ah from the door, throwing him up against the far wall, pressing his thumb over the younger man’s jugular in threat. “Where is he?”

Al-Las’ah choked out a chuckle, clamping one hand bruisingly hard around Tommy’s wrist. “Where you have been so many times before.”

The quiet _snick_ of the blade was Tommy’s only warning. Instinct lifted his arm, blocked al-Las’ah’s wrist against his forearm. Tommy slammed al-Las’ah’s wrist back into the wall, the switchblade jolting from his fingers and clattering to the floor.

“You _will_ pay your debts for this, codebreaker,” Tommy hissed in the younger man’s face. He reared back his head and smashed his forehead into al-Las’ah’s, feeling the snap and crunch of cartilege. Stepping back, he dropped the guard to the floor, where he groaned on hands and knees.

Getting a foot in al-Las’ah’s ribs, Tommy kicked him onto his back. Al-Las’ah hit the floor with a thud, wheezing a curse, his face a mask of blood from his broken nose. Lip curling, Tommy snatched fistfuls of his shirt, and slammed his bloodied face into the wall once, twice, three times, the sound reminding him of afternoons in Raisa’s kitchen, watching from a barstool while she tenderized meat with a metal hammer. Al-Las’ah left a red smear on the beige wall.

Jaw locked, breathing rapidly through his nose, Tommy dropped al-Las’ah, limp and unconscious, to the floor. Kicking the dropped knife further down the hall, he reached for the pouch on the guard’s belt that would hold restraints. His fingers brushed the canvas flap—

—and behind him, muffled through the nearly-soundproof door, raw and ripped through with rage and terror—

“ _Tommy!_ ”


	11. If Only In My Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver wakes to a pleasant surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, admittedly, this might be a little cruel.

Oliver didn’t so much wake as become slowly aware of the depth and evenness of his breathing, the heaviness of his limbs, the mildly uncomfortable twist of his t-shirt over his torso. Sunlight lay warm across his face, dappling his eyelids in red and gold and red and gold. Bare feet shuffled softly across the carpet, cloth rustling and wood scraping against wood as dresser drawers opened and closed.

He drew in a particularly deep breath, let it go on a lengthy sigh, and leaned his weight more firmly into the too-soft mattress. A soft curse and quiet whine pulled the corners of his lips up.

“Oh, you’re up.” Oliver drew in a deep breath through his nose as answer. Feet shuffled closer across the floor, and fingertips brushed over his cheek, tickling across the stubble on his jawline. “Did you fall asleep here again?”

Her voice was soft with checked laughter, a little teasing as her palm slid down his neck to cup against his shoulder. Oliver eased his eyes open, lashes fluttering against the filtering daylight—but he held no resentment against it for the golden halo it made around her face in loose curls.

“Hey.” His voice came out gravel-rough with sleep as he smiled up at her, bright, sweeping relief blossoming behind his heart. “You’re home.”

She bit at her lip, grin crooked as he laid his hand over hers on his shoulder and leveraged himself to sitting. “So are you, looks like. And in my bed. You moving in?”

“I needed to be here,” he answers, gently rubbing his hand up and down from her fingertips, over her knuckles, to her wrist, back again. “Needed to be here when you came back.”

His brow furrowed, something about that not seeming quite right.

She laughed, light and fond, and slipped her hand from beneath his to turn away, free hand sweeping out to gesture at a suitcase, open on the floor by the dresser. “Well, you can help me unpack.”

She took a step towards the case and panic jumped up Oliver’s throat. He caught her wrist in one hand, setting his palm in the dip of her waist—against the soft strip of skin between the hem of her crop top and the waist of her skirt—to turn her body back towards him. “No—stay.”

Huffing tolerantly, she wrinkled her nose, pushing her glasses up a little, and tilted her head at him. “Oliver, it was only a couple of months.”

“Stay,” he pleaded quietly, letting go of her wrist to frame her waist in both hands. He looked up at her, chin tipped back, the light behind him softening the edges of her face, muting the bright color of her mouth. “Stay.”

Her lips parted and she nodded. “Okay.” She laid her hands on his shoulders, bent slowly towards him. “Okay.”

His eyes slipped closed when her breath hit his face, and her lips brushed his so soft, over and over, almost the ghost of a kiss—strangely melancholy for their first. She pulled away and he nearly rose off the bed chasing after her. She chuckled, but the sense that something was  _wrong_  was rising in his chest like pressure.

Oliver opened his eyes, mouth still damp from hers, and furrowed his brow. The soft fuzziness around her face was becoming a blur, obscuring her features. “Felicity,” he breathed. “Where did you go?”

Her hands planed up the slopes of his shoulders, tracing up the column of his neck to curl around his jaw, behind his ears, tipping his head up further. She leaned down like she would kiss him again, but just as her lips touched his, she whispered, “When you find me, let me know.”

Oliver jerked awake in a cold sweat, heart thundering against his sternum and body shaking with adrenaline. Wild-eyed, he searched the dim early-gloom of Felicity’s bedroom, uncurling stiffly from the end of her bed where he only remembered sitting down some hours before.

The room was empty.

He was alone.

She was still gone.


	12. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity asks Tommy a slightly different line of questions in the downtime in the apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't mind me, I took prompts on Tumblr and will just be shuffling some new Interludes between the already established ones. Just little outtakes from the canon of the story.

Felicity sat curled in the armchair, bored of her book, and yet not quite feeling up to the ferocity that needling Tommy about all the things he kept locked behind his teeth required. Sometimes asking Tommy questions was like being back in her cell; a game with sharp edges, a swift exchange and calculation. Other times, she’d have better luck drawing blood from a stone.

Judging by Tommy’s thousand-mile stare at the far wall and the butterfly knife flipping rhythmically in his fingers, this would be an example of the latter.

So Felicity chose a slightly different tack.

“What do you know about me?”

Tommy startled, blinking and turning his head towards her with a furrow of his brow. The butterfly knife never faltered in its continued dance around his knuckles. “What?”

Sitting up a little more, Felicity kept her gaze on his steady and wrapped her arms around her knees, head tipping to one side. “What do you  _know_  about me? I mean… you were prepared for my peanut allergy, you clearly know I’m not a practicing Jew, unless the ham sandwiches were meant to be an  _incredibly_  antisemitic insult.” Tommy actually looked surprised and affronted by that insinuation. She shrugged. “You know about my broken arm when I was a kid, you clearly knew my comings and goings at home. You even knew my birth control schedule.”

The butterfly knife snapped close and Tommy’s eyes slid away from hers, the rims of his ears pinkening, of all things. “Ah, uh—that I did not know, actually. Malik keeps your current medical records, I just got the summary report.”

Felicity narrowed her eyes on his profile. He was off balance with that question. Good. “Okay, so what  _do you_  know?” He raised an exasperated eyebrow at her and she scrunched her nose unapologetically. “Like, my favorite color, foods I hate, dating history, hopes, dreams, whatever.”

Sighing, Tommy sat back into the couch and tapped the closed knife against his denim-clad knee. He pursed his lips and eyed her, clearly measuring whether or not to humor her or risk that she ask thornier questions.

Felicity waited.

“Favorite color, easy. Could’ve called that before I died.”

She blinked in surprise, spine straightening. “We barely knew each other. we were—acquaintances at best.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You’re easy to pin in some ways. You don’t  _have_  a favorite color. You like some better than others but you just like… color.”

Felicity scraped her nails lightly over the cotton leggings covering her shins, lips parting slowly at the stunningly accurate observation. He wasn’t at all wrong. And she wouldn’t have thought he’d noticed her enough  _before_  to make such an observation.

Posture relaxed, Tommy’s expression was smooth and easy when he looked at her. “The rest, yeah, most of that, we knew. We do our homework. The people you’ve dated, spending habits, routine, that’s just basic reconnaissance. Hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes—that’s harder.”

Chewing on the inside of her bottom lip, Felicity wasn’t quite buying that half-dodge. “But not impossible.”

Tommy huffed in amusement. “No, not impossible. You wanted to go to MIT since sixth grade, and you were happy to tell any teacher or school official that would listen. In writing. Repeatedly.” Heat tinged Felicity’s cheeks, yet she couldn’t be embarrassed by it. That was a dream she’d achieved and damn well earned. “Fears, well. That’s mostly harder.”

His eyes sharped on her, and she could feel the gaze slice through her in a way that made her gasp soundlessly. Somehow, there was no cruelty in it. “Some of it’s just—obvious intuitive leaps. Your dad took off and you had no other family, and your mom wasn’t around a lot. Fear of abandonment and vulnerability is—probably one of the most  _standard_  things about you.”

Felicity squirmed, beginning to regret this conversation. The last time they’d talked about fathers and childhood had been over a game of dominoes and had not gone… well.

Seeing her discomfort, Tommy’s lashes flickered, and he squinted exaggeratedly, bringing a hand up to scrub over his jaw. “One fear, I have to admit, couldn’t figure it out.”

Tensing a little, Felicity scrunched her mouth to one side.

Mouth hidden by his fingers, Tommy’s brows popped high in question. “Why kangaroos?”

An unexpected breath of relief rushed out of Felicity, and she couldn’t quite help crooked, abashed smile that tugged at her lips. Ducking her head, she rubbed a hand over the back of her neck, gathering her hair and holding it at her nape.  “Have you seen how freakishly muscular their arms and chests are? They creep me out.”

Eyes going wide, Tommy burst into a surprised, genuine laugh, palm falling to his chest as his head tipped back, eyes crinkling nearly shut.

Defenseless against that broad, warm grin and rolling chuckles, Felicity let herself laugh softly with him.


	13. Laundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver keeps Felicity close how he can while she's still missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another backward-slid-in outtake Interlude. Apologies for the confusion of out-of-order chapter updates.

 

Oliver stepped up beside Diggle in the foundry, leaving only Roy still late to arrive. They were running the endgame mission tonight on the Glades’ missing girls, and no doubt Roy was fending off Sin, who’d very nearly gotten overly involved with this mission on their last outing.

Digg stood with his arms folded, eyes unfocused as he stared into the middle distance. Or maybe not the middle distance—maybe just as far as the computer monitor.

As Oliver checked his watch, John suddenly turned his head toward him, one brow raising. “You really are practically living at her place, huh?”

Oliver’s chin came up in self conscious surprise, brows furrowing and lips pulling into a frown. “Wh—how do you always just  _know_?”

Digg ran his eyes over Oliver and sighed, the lines of his face suddenly weary from a world of weight. “You’re doing your laundry there.”

Oliver’s eyes narrowed, lips twitching into a purse and head shaking minutely. “How did you—”

Diggle looked away, shifting on his feet uncomfortably. “You smell like her detergent.”

Taken aback, Oliver swallowed harshly and cast his gaze in the opposite direction.

The empty black chair drew him back like a magnet.

“I miss her, Digg.”

Just as quiet, just as hoarse, John whispered in return, “Me, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I extended this slightly on Tumblr with some admittedly not nice tags:
> 
> felicity’s detergent is apple mango tango #it’s bright and fruity and so very… her, #oliver actually did buy his own detergent; it’s basic and scentless, #he had fully intended not to use up her detergent because that felt like being a bad houseguest, #but then he was standing there with water rushing into the washer with his small load of clothes, #standing in her house among her things in the midst of everything unguardedly felicity smoak, #and she is the only thing missing, #and he just… couldn’t take it, #there was too much of her all around him and not enough and he just thought, #this scent is a little piece of what made up her physical presence; a piece so subtle and intrinsically there i never noticed it, #not til it was GONE, #so he poured a cupful of her detergent over his own clothes and hoped it would help, #hoped it would hurt a little less to carry that tiny fragment of her into his lungs with every breath he took, #everywhere he went carrying that reminder of her—and of her continued absence—with him, #it didn’t hurt less, #he decided that was better.


	14. News, Cycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurel visits Oliver to check in with him about his renewed vigilantism, the search for Felicity, and how he's handling both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actual real update this time! My apologies for yesterday's false alarm; I mistakenly uploaded an old chapter and had to delete it. I hope this makes up for the confusion. Expect the next chapter of the main story either tomorrow or Tuesday!

The newspaper landed on his desk with a slap, and it was a testament to Oliver’s exhaustion that he hadn’t even noticed Laurel entering the office at Verdant. He looked up at her with raised eyebrows.

“Glad to see you’re finally back in business,” she smiled tightly, nodding at the paper. “It’s about damn time.”

“Hello to you too, Laurel.” Oliver sat back in his chair, the springs creaking, and picked up the paper.

The front page headline screamed “ARROW FIRES BACK AT CRIME AFTER TWO MONTH HIATUS.” The feature photo showed the front of the SCPD’s Glades precinct in the pre-dawn, a row of four men with their hands and ankles bound pinned to the brick facade via their clothing by unmistakably green arrows.

“It’s good that you didn’t lose your flair for drama during your sabbatical,” Laurel remarked wryly.

“I needed to make a statement,” Oliver sighed, rubbing at the corner of his eyebrow with his thumb. “These men were snatching women off the streets and trafficking them into certain death after long, slow degradation.” He sat forward, staring at the newspaper photo with lips compressed into a grim line. “I allowed myself to be distracted, and people took advantage of my slip in attention to prey further on people who have already been given the worst this city has to offer. Now they’ll know, the Arrow’s not going anywhere.”

Laurel narrowed her eyes at him, but sighed, folding her arms over her chest. “Your savior/martyr complex aside, the city does need you, Oliver. I believed for so long that justice and the law were one and the same, but the truth is larger and uglier than that. We _need_ people like you filling in the gaps.” She, too, stared at the newspaper he held. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the people of this city are experiencing a deficit in _hope_ since Malcolm’s Undertaking.”

She looked up and met his eyes, hers blazing. “You can’t give that to them and then just take it away.”

Oliver swallowed hard, holding her eyes, and nodded. “I won’t let them down again.”

“Good,” Laurel nodded, letting her hands fall to her sides and looking around til she found a chair against the wall. Dragging it in front of the desk, she took a seat and crossed her legs. “I know things are incredibly difficult on you right now, so I’m just glad you’re not giving up on Starling. But Oliver…” Her head tilted to one side, long, loosely curled caramel-brown hair sliding against the deep lilac of her blouse. “You don’t have to do this alone. Any of it. You have your team. Diggle seems about as steady and reliable as they come, and Harper, well… he’s coming along.”

Oliver dropped the paper on the desk and leaned back again, one broad palm sliding across the freshly-trimmed hair at the back of his head. He nodded. “I know.”

“That’s not all, though.” Laurel waited til he met her eyes. “I know things with you and I haven’t always been good, to say the least. But before anything else, we were friends, weren’t we?”

A pang stabbed dully through Oliver’s chest as he thought fondly, sadly back to their high school days, when he and Tommy were thick as thieves and they often talked Laurel into their trouble against her better judgement. He nodded again.

“Well, I hope we still can be,” Laurel said quietly. “So if you need someone to talk to… there’s me, okay?”

Oliver focused on her face, and thought of all that had passed between them, all the thorns and anger and grief and mistakes. He wasn’t sure things between him and Laurel would ever, ever be _easy_ again. But that didn’t mean that what there _could_ be wasn’t worth the effort. “Sure. Yeah. Thank you, Laurel.”

She smiled at him softly.

Inhaling deeply, Oliver asked, because he couldn’t _not_ , “Still no word from Sara?”

Laurel winced sympathetically and shook her head in the negative. “I’m sorry. And you should know that Dad harasses the detective assigned to Felicity’s case for weekly updates. He’s not letting it go cold.”

Frustration blocked his throat, burned at the backs of his eyes, and he looked down at his fingers tapping solidly against the desktop. He tucked his lips and dipped his chin as acknowledgement. OIiver cleared his throat, but his voice still came out tight and rough as he confessed, “I’ve turned over every inch of her townhouse more times than I can actually count. Sometimes I think I do it from top to bottom all over again just because I can’t sleep and I don’t know what else to do. I have looked at everything for _anything_ but there’s just…” his brows lifted as he sucked in a fortifying breath. “There’s nothing.”

Her eyes studying his face, Laurel absently twisted the rings on her fingers. “I never asked… and maybe, I don’t know, after everything maybe it’s not my place, but… you and Felicity?”

Oliver looked up at her and quickly, minutely shook his head. “No. Felicity is… my partner. My friend.”

Laurel raised one eyebrow, not exactly skeptical, more surprised. “But in May, with Slade—”

“A trick,” Oliver bobbed his head, moving his gaze to Laurel’s shoulder as if that could make this conversation easier or less awkward. “To get her close enough to him to dose him with the Mirakuru antidote.”

Laurel hummed as if she didn’t quite buy it.

Instantly restless with impatient energy, Oliver stood, circling to lean a thigh against the side of the desk. “Doesn’t matter anyways. All that matters is finding her. Bringing her home.”

Laurel nodded and stood as well. “How come you’re still running your operation from here, anyways? I thought Isabel Rochev kicked you guys off the property.”

Oliver smirked humorlessly. “The board rather forgot about that after Isabel mysteriously vanished in the middle of the Siege, and I didn’t see any need to remind them when they decided to auction off the property. Took a good chunk of change, but I own the building now.”

Laurel shrugged her mouth in surprise. “You going to reopen the club?”

Oliver’s smile disappeared, his mouth opening and hanging empty until finally, “...I don’t know. Thea was the one running the place last year, and she’s spending some time away right now, figuring things out after—after Mom. I kind of want to hold it for her.” He looked at the floor, shifting his weight from foot to foot, fingers rubbing together. “And before Thea… this was Tommy’s place more than it was mine.”

Laurel breathed in quietly, hands squeezing into fists as her settled grief sat naked on her face for a moment. She nodded.

Oliver looked up, around the room, as if he was seeing past it to the wide, open bones of the building. “I’m not sure I’d really even know where to start.”

She cleared her throat, stepping away from the chair and turning her body towards the door. Catching her cues, Oliver followed her out onto the catwalk and to the top of the stairs. She smiled at him one last time. “Listen, I meant what I said. If you need to talk, you always know how to find me.”

Sticking his hands in his back pockets, Oliver nodded and managed a grateful smile. “Thank you, Laurel. And you’ll let me know the second Sara makes contact with you.”

“I will.” Laurel nodded again, briefly touching his arm. “Bye, Ollie.”

He drew her into a quick hug, and then watched from the top of the stairs as she left, and wasn’t sure if he now felt warmer, or more hollow.


	15. Turning Points

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurel takes a phone call, and everything is on the cusp of change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you might notice this is in Laurel's point of view. And some of you might go "oh, I can skip this one, I don't really relate to her."
> 
> You really can't skip this one if you're keeping up with the actual plot. ;) Trust me.

Laurel narrowed her existence down to a rhythm; heartbeat, left fist, right fist, kick, the swing of the heavy bag, the harsh, timed punch of her breath. Sweat rolled down her spine and wisps of hair stuck to her temples, clung to her nape.

She had a tendency to get almost _too_ immersed in things. Single-minded pursuit of the law. Enveloping rage and a motivating grudge. Questions, and the hunt for answers. All-encompassing, drowning grief. Pills and bottles that were never deep enough. Losing herself was often cyclical.

Laurel kept track of the time she spent at the gym by the level of her topknot or braid’s disintegration. It wasn’t a perfect system, but for the most part it worked. Let her get out of her head while leaving her a way to get back _in_.

Two strong hands caught the punching bag before it could swing back to Laurel for the next beat, and she blinked, slowly bouncing to a stop on her toes, lowering her fists. She realized her topknot was wobbling loosely, and she probably should have stopped about five or ten minutes ago.

Well. It wasn’t a _perfect_ system.

“Looking good today, Lance. You’re definitely improving your endurance.” Ted Grant, coach and gym owner, carefully settled the bag to spin idly on the chain, offering Laurel a wry but encouraging smile.

She huffed softly in reply, raising an eyebrow at him. “Endurance was never the problem. Didn’t think you were here today, Ted.”

Ted stepped back from the bag, grinning and waggling his eyebrows. “Hoping to avoid me?”

For just a second—just one, less, even; all she would permit herself—he reminded her of Tommy with that brash, teasing smile. It was a settled, even sweet sadness today. Sometimes missing Tommy still cut like a knife, and that was strangely reassuring. But more and more often, his loss was just another piece of her, more or less in harmony with the rest.

Laurel tugged at the velcro strap of one glove with her teeth, wrinkling her nose as the sweat on her skin turned clammy as she cooled. Meeting Ted’s eyes, she gave him a small smile. “Maybe just hoping to avoid your patented lectures.”

Laughing softly, Ted took another step back, clapping a hand over the gym logo stretching across his well-defined chest. “Hurtful. I only lecture when you look like you need it.” He canted his head towards the boxing ring behind him, an invitation. “The rest of the time I’m happy to let you punch it out.”

Smiling more genuinely—grateful that Ted was understanding of what brought Laurel to his gym, and that he knew when to push and when to leave her alone—Laurel shook her head. “Think I’ve punished enough dead weight for one day,” she cracked, lightly shoving the slowly spinning punching bag.

“Oh, stings,” Ted wrinkled his nose in fake pain, ruined by his wide grin. “Don’t make me regret giving you a key to this place.”

Warmth swept up from Laurel’s stomach, swelling her chest with unexpected emotion. She was still stunned by the kindness Grant had done her, giving her all hours access to his gym. She didn’t know why he’d done it; she’d barely opened up to him in the months since she’d started coming here. And really, working at the DA’s office, she could afford a nicer gym with real 24 hour access, someplace in a newer building, with better equipment and amenities. Somewhere not in the Glades. But a member of her AA group had recommended Ted’s gym, and Laurel had known the first day that they’d been right to. Something about this place was _right_ for her. And given the hours her job demanded, and the increasing frustration she felt at her office’s inefficiency, apathy, and corruption, that key had been a greater gift than Ted could know.

“Wouldn’t want to do that.” Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Laurel stripped off her gloves and headed to pass Ted for the showers. She paused and squeezed his arm just above the elbow. Her mouth hung open for a moment, voice rasping when she finally said, “It’s nice to have someplace to go.”

Ted covered her hand with his, squeezing quickly and smiling, warm and soft and kind and _understanding_ , at her. “You are welcome here anytime, Laurel Lance.”

Nervous butterflies erupting in her belly, Laurel instantly pulled her hand from under Ted’s and put on her business smile. Drawing in a deep breath, she fortified all her walls. “Thanks. I’d better run, though, I’m supposed to meet my dad for dinner. Night, Ted.”

His head tipped back, eyes knowing, but he only stepped back to give her room, offering a friendly nod goodbye. “You take care, Laurel.”

Measuring her steps—nice and even, brisk but not hurried; a path, not a retreat—she left him behind and aimed for the locker room, murmuring to herself, “I always do.”

—

Dinner was Chinese takeout at home, alone with a stack of files.

She hadn’t lied to Ted about her plans. Quentin had canceled on her for work, cheerfully irascible and complaining far too much about his promotion to not be proud and pleased to have made captain. Laurel was proud _of_ him. She’d worried working the Hood case so doggedly, and then turning around and _helping_ Oliver, would tank his career. She’d probably been more furious than Quentin had been when he’d gotten bumped back to beat cop last summer. But then, Laurel had been more furious last summer than everyone, about everything.

Fortunately, as the city worked at long last to clean house—at least to a degree—the purge of the higher levels of personnel at all the city precincts post-Siege had left a lot of openings, and someone with the right strings in hand had been discerning enough to see what a damn fine detective Quentin Lance was.

This promotion was exactly what Quentin deserved; fortunately, getting stuck behind desks and podiums more often than behind the wheel of a cruiser was also what he _needed_ after his hospitalization in the spring. He’d scared Laurel badly, but now he was thriving.

Sighing around a mouthful of lo mein as she paged through another dead end casefile, Laurel wished she could say the same for herself. Tossing down the file in disgust, she leaned back into the cushions of her couch, glaring sullenly at the blank TV across from her.

She was stagnating. Professionally, her ambition had always paired beautifully with her belief that justice, true justice, was possible, and that the law was the way to achieve it. But two years of chaos and death and loss at high cost had bitterly disillusioned Laurel—not with justice, but with the law. Or really, not even with the law. The law itself was good, was strong and powerful. It was, however, also mired in bureaucracy and subject to the manipulations of the corrupt.

Laurel believed in every fiber, down to her very marrow, in justice. That it was an equalizing force, the keeper of balance. And she respected the law. But the system had failed her, failed too many others. The system was ineffective and ponderously slow at best, and actively abusive at its worst.

Starling City was infested to the core with the worst the system could possibly be, and had been for so long that attempts now to begin rooting it out looked like trying to build a sandcastle at high tide.

She glanced at the far corner of the coffee table, where a copy of the Starling Gazette rested, bearing another headline about the Arrow. Laurel couldn’t begin to describe her relief and satisfaction that Oliver had pulled his head out of his ass and got back in the game; she understood his distraction, his grief. Between his mother’s death, everything Slade’s Siege had cost him personally, and the disappearance of Felicity Smoak, Oliver had more than earned a timeout.

Unfortunately, Starling couldn’t afford to give him long to rest. The broken system needed someone like him to operate outside its limitations. If Oliver hadn’t eventually risen to the occasion, Laurel feared she might have done something… drastic.

Starling City needed someone _like_ the Arrow; Oliver Queen was possibly another story.

The sudden buzz of her cell phone broke Laurel’s musing, and she swore softly under her breath, leaning forward and digging through the minefield of papers and folders and printouts that devoured her coffee table, the intermittent vibration against the wood rattling in her molars.

“Aha!” At last, she uncovered it beneath a mugshot, beside the container of fried rice. Stretching to scoop it up, Laurel hit the answer button and brought the phone to her ear without looking, breathlessly answering, “Hello?”

“Hey, Sis.”

Laurel froze, eyes wide, mouth open in astonishment. Sara’s voice was warm and soft like honey, the hint of a fond smile in the low tones. There was a tinniness to the connection, as if distance made it fragile and tenuous.

“Laurel?” Sara laughed, faintly concerned. “You there?”

“Yes!” Laurel leaned hurriedly forward, setting her free hand against the edge of the table as if she could physically keep Sara on the line. Her heart raced. “Yes, I’m here! Sara, where have you _been_? Everyone has been trying to reach you. It’s been months.”

“Well, I’m doing fine, Laurel, thanks for asking, how are you?” Sara drawled, sounding exasperated.

Laurel huffed, rolling her eyes and flopping irritably back against the couch cushions. “Cute, Sara. Maybe if you’d called sooner we’d have time for pleasantries, like Dad winding up in the hospital for three weeks right after you left, and getting promoted to captain when he got out! But you were too busy running around with your girlfriend.”

“I wasn’t exactly in range of a cell tower, Laurel,” Sara protested. “Dad was in the hospital? Is he okay?”

Slightly mollified by her sister’s strident worry, Laurel let out a sigh. “Dad’s fine. He had some internal damage and he scared the shit out of me, but he’s doing fine. The doctors have him watching his stress and his cholesterol, so he’s not exactly loving that, but fortunately running a precinct is right in the sweet spot of his preferred aggravation levels.”

Sara snickered, the sound simultaneously relieved. “Yeah, I’ll bet. I’m glad he got promoted, he’s earned it. And I’m sure he’s loving harassing a whole squad of detectives.”

“Riding them right into the ground, to hear them tell it,” Laurel answered wryly. Suddenly, she sat up straight, guilt and urgency flashing through her. “Shit, Sara, listen. This is important.”

“I’m listening,” Sara returned quickly, all her humor gone, taking away Laurel’s bratty baby sister and leaving in her place a cool, alert professional assassin. Laurel shivered.

“You know Felicity Smoak, right?”

“She’s a friend. A good friend.” Sara’s tone sharpened with suspicion and concern. “Laurel, what’s happened?”

Laurel took a deep breath, mouth flattening into a grim line. “She disappeared, Sara. Felicity’s been missing for three months.”

There was a long, tense beat of silence.

“ _What_?”

Every hair raised on Laurel’s body, breath catching frozen in her lungs. If she’d thought Sara’s demeanor and voice had changed before, now she sounded—dangerous. Frightening.

And scared.

Swallowing hard, Laurel unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth, shaking herself. “She disappeared a few weeks after you left, just after Dad got out of the hospital. Went home from Verdant one night and hasn’t been seen since. No note, no ransom demand, not even a crime scene. There has been zero trace of her, Sara. Like she just vanished into thin air.” Laurel stared into the middle distance, nibbling her lower lip, worried all over again for the acquaintance she’d barely known, but had liked the few times they’d spoken. She certainly admired Felicity’s work, once she’d learned what it _really_ was. “Ollie’s been losing his mind.”

“Oh my god,” Sara muttered. There was a crackle of static and a fuzzy whisper of background noise. “There’s been—nothing? No sign of her at all?”

Laurel shook her head, even though Sara couldn’t see. “She’s just—gone. I… I hate to suggest it, but based on what I’ve heard about her skills, if she _wanted_ to disappear, it sounds like she could pull this off—”

“No,” Sara interrupted, harsh and final. “Trust me, Laurel, Felicity wouldn’t do this. She would never do that to Oliver, to—to any of us.” She pulled in a long breath, white noise over the connection, and spoke again slightly steadier. “If Felicity’s gone, she didn’t _choose_ to go. And if there is absolutely no sign or trace of where she went, or even what happened when she disappeared… I don’t like what that could mean.” She sighed, and Laurel pictured her pinching the bridge of her nose. Tone deeply chagrined, Sara said, “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

Laurel bit back an unkind and unhelpful comment—this wasn’t the time for her own hurt feelings about Sara’s lengthy incommunicado period—and spun one of the rings on her index finger with her thumb. “You called now. And you’re needed. Oliver said something about I should ask you if you’d heard anything rumbling in the League of Assassins?”

“No,” Sara answered slowly, distractedly. Then: “Hang on for a second, Laurel.”

There was a back and forth murmur in the background, Sara’s voice and one other, low and throaty. Both were presumably speaking Arabic, from the muffled syllables Laurel could pick out. Nyssa, then. Her girlfriend.

With a scuffle of noise, Sara came back on the line. “I asked Nyssa, and Laurel—there’s been nothing.”

“Oh.” Laurel deflated. Somehow, she’d hoped Sara would be able to fix this, that Laurel would be able to help bring Felicity home. “That’s… unfortunate.”

“No, listen. There’s been _nothing_ from the League since we, uh. Since we took off. Radio silence. Knowing about Felicity now… Nyssa doesn’t like it.”

Laurel’s brows furrowed, lips pulling a frown. “You mean…”

Sara took a deep breath. “Laurel, I need you to tell Oliver everything we’ve said tonight. And tell him not to make _any_ moves without me. I’m coming home.”


	16. Hope Is A Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurel delivers Sara's message to Team Arrow, Diggle has news of his own, and the search for Felicity continues.

Digg clattered down the staircase into the foundry, eyes already on Oliver.

Oliver glanced up from under his brows where he cleaned the components of his bow on the weapons bench, but he didn’t say anything.

Digg sighed, a heavy breath of weariness, irritation, and sadness. Oliver wasn’t the only one who missed Felicity. It was a little strange, almost, to Digg, the way Oliver reacted to Felicity’s disappearance. He understood it completely; he just couldn’t imagine doing it himself. They had very different ways of losing people, John Diggle and Oliver Queen.

Oliver ran away, physically or metaphorically, and went into an emotional tailspin that threatened him with crashing and burning. Digg tended to hone his emotions into weapons, and get to work.

“Hello to you, too,” he told Oliver wryly, coming up even with the weapons bench and leaning against it, arms folding over his chest.

Pressing his lips together, Oliver began to reassemble the bow on the table. “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, man. Any time.” Digg nodded, standing straight and setting his hands on the edge of the table. He ducked his head, unsuccessfully trying to catch Oliver’s eye. “But listen, not to be a dick about it, but since when do we let Laurel Lance call Team Arrow meetings?”

Usually referring to their operation by Felicity’s favored nickname could at least get a cutting look from Oliver, an eyeroll when he was in good humor, but this time he didn’t bat an eye. Instead, his jaw clenched and his head came up, fingers tightening around the bow as he glared at the ceiling.

“Since we need all hands on deck, and Laurel says she has something to say.” Oliver turned finally and met Diggle’s eyes, blue gaze hard, challenging, daring Digg to start an argument.

Ah. There it was.

Cocking his head to one side, Digg eyed Oliver, cool and calm, a grounding counterbalance to Oliver’s desperate volatility. “You think she’s got a lead on Felicity.”

Scraping his teeth up the inside of his bottom lip, Oliver turned sharply away and put his bow in its case. “She wouldn’t say. Just that she had something to tell us, and we should all be here. Where the hell is Roy?”

John would pity Oliver for the wild hope so clearly chewing him raw—except John could feel the buzzing, hurried hunger of it nibbling at his own edges.

They’d all pressed every contact they had, leaned on every informant or information broker in the city—and several outside of it, thanks to Lyla’s extended reach—but how many times could they come up empty handed before something shattered?

What could Laurel have found out that the rest of them couldn’t?

The alley door clanged noisily open, admitting Roy with his ubiquitous—and frankly filthy—red hoodie pulled over his head. The kid pushed the cotton hood back and chucked his chin towards Digg and Oliver in greeting. “So where’s the fire? Lance got a case for us?”

Beside Diggle, Oliver froze, and Digg realized it had actually managed to not occur to Oliver until that moment that Laurel might simply have uncovered some new rottenness in Starling’s bureaucratic heart for the Arrow to root out.

Timely, the door at the top of the stairwell opened with a disarmed beep, drawing the men’s eyes as Laurel pushed it open and surveyed the foundry lair, standing on the landing in low heels and a fashionably cut mauve pantsuit.

Diggle turned to Oliver and pointedly raised his eyebrows to say, _She has an access code now?_

Oliver ignored him, and Digg wondered if he’d even thought ahead to where this might lead as Laurel got more and more comfortable getting involved in their operation. As Oliver’s eyes burned—fingers rapidly chafing at his side like he was trying to start a fire—Diggle suspected Oliver wasn’t thinking any further ahead than what might come out of Laurel’s mouth.

As she descended the stairs, Laurel did a quick headcount. “Good, everyone’s here.”

Roy, moving closer to the weapons bench with his hands buried deep in his hoodie pockets—wearing that disaffected streetkid mask John recognized so well—raised a superficially arrogant brow at Laurel. “Well, couldn’t risk a bench warrant for not appearing when summoned.”

Laurel rolled her eyes at him, and to Digg’s surprise, Roy smirked, all familiar, dry humor.

“Funny,” Laurel drawled. Then turning back to make quick eye contact with Digg, she set her focus on Oliver, who was leaning slowly farther across the metal table like he might climb over it and shake Laurel’s information out of her. Digg took a subtle step closer to him, hands loose at his sides, and Laurel’s expression went brisk and earnest. “I’m going to cut right to the chase. Sara called me.”

The entire room crystallized, frozen between one heartbeat and the next, every spine drawn up and every gaze sharpened, a thick tension snapping from one of the men to the next, crackling between them, drawing taut with widened eyes, clenched fists—and then Oliver broke it with an indrawn breath.

“Sara?” he croaked, voice gone rough, choked. He cleared his throat. Beside him, Diggle realized he himself had taken an unconscious step forward and fell back, folding his arms over his chest. Oliver’s eyes were bright as flames, and just as burning. “What did she say? Where is she?”

The flat line of Laurel’s mouth didn’t bode well. “She didn’t know anything about Felicity. Sara hadn’t even known she was missing.”

Beside Digg, Oliver stiffened, and then slowly, minutely deflated. At the opposite corner of the table, Roy jutted his jaw forward and glared at the cement floor. Digg took a deep breath, and tried to strangle the adrenaline-rocketed thunder of his heart.

“But,” all eyes cautiously raised to Laurel again, and she covered a few more feet from the stairs to the table, nearly in their circle. “She and Nyssa haven’t heard anything from the League either. So much so that they found it suspicious.”

Oliver, Diggle, and Roy exchanged loaded glances, and Digg shifted his weight. “Suspicious like they think the League might have something to do with Felicity disappearing?”

Oliver clenched his jaw and hissed through his teeth, “That makes a frightening amount of sense.”

Roy swallowed hard, his eyes haunted. “If the League of _Assassins_ did something to Felicity and we can’t find her, does that mean she’s—”

Oliver whirled on him, one finger raised like denial could be a weapon, his eyes blazing. “ _No_. Don’t even say it. No.”

Roy rocked back on his heels, chin high and nostrils flared, but he nodded tensely.

“ _Listen_ ,” Laurel cut in, stepping up to the other side of the weapons table. “I don’t know if the League is involved or not. Sara didn’t seem sure, but I wouldn’t rule it out. That’s not important right now.”

Oliver swivelled his manic-acid glare to her. “Not _import_ —”

Laurel cut him off, slapping her palms on the steel surface and leaning forward, meeting Oliver glare for mulish glare. “Sara is coming home.”

Digg sucked in a sharp breath, a curious, cool relief spreading through his chest, while Oliver’s eyes went round, his lips parting.

“She’s coming—”

“Yes,” Laurel nodded.

“Thank god,” Digg muttered, catching Roy’s eye across the table. Sara was generally level-headed and god _damn_ being the anchor on this crazy ass team could be exhausting when you were doing it alone.

“When?” Oliver asked urgently, licking his lips. “Is she bringing Nyssa, or are they splitting to recon the League?”

Laurel straightened away from the table, hands raised defensively. “Ollie, I don’t know. I’d assume Nyssa’s coming with, but everything else—I don’t know.”

Oliver nodded, stepping back and turning around to survey the weapons cache and his suit in its case. “This is good. This is a _lead_. Now that we know where to focus our efforts, I can—”

“No,” Laurel interrupted again, firmly. “Oliver, whatever you’re thinking, no.”

Digg’s eyebrows went high—Roy tucking his lips and looking pointedly away, stepping clear of the likely oncoming blast zone—and Oliver turned slowly, his face set in dangerous lines, shoulders back. “No offense, Laurel, but this is a team matter. We can take it from here.”

“Excuse me?” Laurel scoffed, lip curling in offense. “So you can tag me in when you need something from me, but I start having opinions and it’s time to shut me out?” Oliver huffed and opened his mouth, but Laurel cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand. “No, I don’t want to hear it. Setting that line of bullshit aside _for now_ , maybe you won’t listen to me but you _clearly_ value Sara’s word, and she told me to tell _you_ not to make any moves until she got here. So you can sit on your hands or shove your thumbs up your ass for all I care, but doing anything before Sara gets here would be idiotic at best and potentially lethal at worst.”

Shoulders and chest heaving with sudden rapid breath, Oliver slammed a fist on the metal table, making Laurel startle back. “I cannot just keep waiting around _doing nothing_ to bring Felicity home!”

Shaking slightly, Laurel strode right up to the opposite edge of the table, expression furious, tone dripping icicles. “Don’t you _dare_ try to scare me into letting you have your way, Oliver Queen. Don’t you _dare_.” The cold of her voice hit Oliver like a slap, and he looked away from the dagger of her stare, ashamed. Taking a deep breath, Laurel tugged down the edges of her jacket. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again.”

Oliver nodded roughly, and Digg sighed, moving to his side and setting two fingertips against Oliver’s elbow. “Listen, man, she’s right. I’m as sick of dangling in limbo as you are, we all are. We _all_ want Felicity home ASAP.” Roy nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “But stomping around making a lot of noise before we know anything real isn’t going to help. What if we go poking around the League, and they _are_ responsible for disappearing our girl? What if we tip them off we know, and we lose any chance of ever finding her? Finding out what they _did_ to her?”

Glaring a hole in the floor, Oliver held himself tightly, swallowed hard, and nodded. Digg let his hand fall to his side, and Oliver exhaled roughly, dragging his palms across his face and back over his hair. “Okay. Okay, you’re right.” He looked up, met Laurel’s still-angry eyes. “You’re _both_ right. I just…” For a moment, every mask and guard fell away from Oliver’s face, and what looked out of it was a naked sword of despair. Roy looked away. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. This _nothing_. I feel like I’m failing her.”

“I know, Oliver,” Digg spoke softly, confessional. “Trust me, so do I. But for now… for now, waiting _is_ how we help Felicity.

Oliver nodded again, lowering his hands to his sides. He took a deep breath and straightened up tall, his expression smoothing away into cool, collected control. He looked at Laurel, and then held John’s eye. Voice even, he promised, “When I find whoever is responsible for this, I am going to kill them.”

The words dropped sure and solid into the air, infallible fact, a confident vow. One Oliver Queen had made and kept before. Lips a grim-set line, Diggle silently co-signed deep in his heart.

Laurel’s quietly shaky indrawn breath broke the moment, and Diggle moved around the table, holding out an arm to her. She stared at Oliver like she was slowly reconfiguring everything she thought she knew about him, and coming up with worrying gaps in data.

Hovering a hand by her shoulder, Digg drew her attention. “Why don’t I walk you out.”

“Thanks,” Laurel murmured, dragging her eyes away from Oliver as she turned, preceding Digg to the stairs.

As they moved up the staircase, behind them Roy asked Oliver, voice low, “But if this is the League, _why_? I thought after Nyssa brought a goon squad to help take out Slade, we were cool with the Assassin’s Creed crowd.”

Laurel and John hit the landing, and as Digg typed in his code to unlock the door, Oliver answered, “So I had assumed. It seems Nyssa al Ghul isn’t the only force to contend with in the League of Assassins.”

The door clanked open and John gestured Laurel through, closing it behind them. Laurel turned to him immediately, eyes sharp and brows pinched in concern.

“Thanks, Diggle.” He raised an eyebrow in question and she gestured back towards the lair. “For being here. You and Roy. It just seemed like a really bad idea to give Oliver that information alone.”

Digg nodded folding his arms and rubbing his thumb over the callus on his trigger finger. “You made a good call, there. I appreciate you looking out like that, especially given how he’s behaving.”

Laurel sighed and shook her head, looking away with a sour frown. “I get why he’s on edge. It’s no excuse to be an ass, but I understand how he’s feeling. And it’s not going to help Felicity or Starling City or anyone else for Oliver to go picking a fight with a—a guild of fanatic professional murderers. He’d get himself killed.” She sighed again, pressing her fingers briefly to her temple. “Again.”

John snorted. “I don’t know how many lives Oliver’s got left, so let’s try and keep him on this one for a while, yeah?”

Huffing a dry laugh, Laurel pulled out her phone and checked the time. “I have a feeling that’s going to take more than just you and me to make happen.”

Loss catching like a snagged thread in his chest, Digg hummed. “Another good reason to bring Felicity back home.”

“Right,” Laurel nodded, smiling wryly. “As long as he doesn’t kill himself trying to find her. I’ve got to head back to work, but thanks again Mr. Diggle. Good luck in there.”

He offered her a nod of solidarity, lips curling. “Call me Digg.”

Her eyes warming, Laurel nodded again and gave a little wave before walking away through the hollow shell of Verdant.

Diggle watched her go for a moment, a curious mix of hope and dread prickling up his spine.

With a sigh, he turned around and admitted himself back into the foundry. As he made his way down the stairs, he scanned the space. Oliver was by the practice mats, wrapping his hands; Roy was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Harper?”

Oliver glanced at John from under his brows, tying off the last of the tape with his teeth. “He left to tell Sin that Sara’s coming to town. Then I think he’s got a delivery shift.”

“Right,” Digg nodded; it was sometimes easy to forget that they all had lives outside the mission, too easy. Roy had a job as a delivery driver for the Big Belly Burger that Carly used to manage, and half the time he was out running around the Glades with Sin, doing god knew what. John himself was part-time security consulting, not to mention preparing with Lyla for the baby to arrive.

Oliver—well, Oliver seemed to live mostly off of interest. And anger. Digg couldn’t really say with any certainty that Oliver had much of any life outside the mission.

Not these days.

Taking a deep breath, Diggle braced himself for the possibility that he would regret the conversation he was about to start. “Oliver, listen.”

Discarding his shirt on top of his shoes—lined up neatly at the edge of the mats—Oliver looked up at him again, eyes narrowing. “Look, if you’re about to lecture me about not jumping the gun on this League thing, no need. I got it. Laurel was right, and I’m not about to do anything that might jeopardize what could be the only solid lead we’ve had on finding Felicity.”

“That’s the thing,” Digg cut in, tone chagrined, “this isn’t the only lead. It’s not even the first.”

Oliver went very, very still.

Nostrils flaring, the muscles of his neck corded with tension, Oliver asked in a low, dangerously calm voice, “Diggle, what are you saying?”

Raising an unimpressed eyebrow, John folded his arms over his chest, shifting his weight. “I had told you Lyla’s been using her ARGUS resources to keep an eye out for anything that could lead to Felicity, right?”

Oliver’s lips pressed into a thin white line. “And she hasn’t found anything. Because if she’d found anything, you’d have told me.”

Digg shook his head, “Man, the first two times, she didn’t even tell _me_. Not til she was sure they were dead ends.”

Oliver’s eyes popped wide, “First— _two_ times?” He took a halted step forward, fists clenching at his sides. Digg rooted his feet, chin notching upward. Oliver stopped in front of him, seething, “And she didn’t think we’d— _I’d_ want to be looped in?”

One side of John’s mouth tucked wryly. “Yeah, sucks to be on this end of it, doesn’t it. You want to pick a fight with my _pregnant_ , trigger-happy ex-wife about her communication skills, Oliver, that’s your call. But she’s just gonna tell you what she told me.”

Oliver exhaled harshly from his nose, lips tucked, waiting impatiently.

Digg clapped a hand heartily to Oliver’s shoulder, squeezing until a little of the tension leaked out of his friend. “Hope sucks, Queen. We need it, god knows we need it. It’s like holding on to the wrong end of a sword because you’re hanging off a cliff. Letting go would be worse, and the sword’s all that’s keeping you from falling. But it still cuts the shit out of your hands. Still hurts like hell.” He squeezed one more time, wincing sympathetically, and let go. “Lyla didn’t see any point in getting anybody’s hopes up unless she felt confident of the lead. Having told you that, I want you to keep it in mind for what I’m about to say.”

Lips parting slowly, Oliver narrowed his eyes anew. “Spit it out, John.”

“Lyla’s chasing down another lead.” The tape around Oliver’s hands creaked as he tightened them into fists, eyes wide, nostrils flared. Digg nodded once. “She’d probably rather I didn’t tell you, because it’s no more a sure bet than the first two. And those went nowhere. But ARGUS has been monitoring some unusual activity at a defunct Air Force base about thirty minutes across the state line. She’s got some people looking into it a little harder, but she’s got to be discreet. The last thing we need is Waller’s eye on this.”

Oliver nodded jerkily, gaze going distant. He took a small step back and rubbed the corner of his eyebrow with a thumb. “God, no.”

John narrowed his eyes for just a second; wondered yet again what Oliver’s history was with Amanda Waller. Whatever it was, it couldn’t possibly be good. Damn near nothing to come shambling out of the grave of those missing five years had ever been _good_.

Taking a deeper breath, he went on, “I wanted you to know so that you didn’t go hanging everything on Sara, and the possibility of League involvement. Whether that pans out or it doesn’t, whether this base Lyla’s investigating leads anywhere or doesn’t, there will be other leads if these don’t bring Felicity home. We _will_ find her, Oliver.”

Dropping his hand, brows screwed up miserably, Oliver met his eyes. In a tight, small voice—the barest peek at a deep, vulnerable doubt; a cold and broken gift of trust to show it to John—he asked, “You really believe that, Digg? You believe we’ll bring her home?”

Diggle’s heart squeezed, grasping faith in a desperate fist. He turned his head til his gaze fell on the quiet desk that stood several feet away, only two of its four computers humming; the only two the rest of them knew how to operate. The dark monitors and the empty coffee mug with the berry-colored lip print that none of them had the heart to remove. The specifically selected, ergonomically crafted chair that didn’t seem to comfortably hold any of the rest of them, not like they belonged in it.

“I have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves.


	17. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity imagines a homecoming—the good and the bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another Tumblr prompt slid out-of-order into the spaces between chapters.

Sometimes, very late at night, staring into the draping shadows cast by the bedside lamp in her room in Tommy’s apartment, Felicity lay in bed and imagined going home.

Not so much the  _being_  home—because the moments she slipped down that path were too painful to tread often or for long—but the homecoming.

She liked to picture walking through the foundry door, and her team—her friends, her boys, her family—raising their heads, eyes rounding and mouths falling open.

She strained her ears to remember echoes of Digg’s laughter, and tried to paint it, in her imagination, in shades of shock and joy. She tried to rearrange in her mind’s eye the lines of Roy’s features to see his face first overtaken by surprise, a smile overwhelming the mask he’d put on seconds later of gruff relief.

And Oliver. She imagined Oliver looking at her like a ghost at first, like something too painful to let himself believe in. Pictured him watching her descend the stairs—and then, once she reached the basement floor, taking that first step, like he couldn’t help himself, like he was barely aware of his body carrying forward without conscious choice. Shut her eyes against reality and pictured him meeting her across the room at gathering speed, til they crashed into a hug.

She wanted to imagine the solidity of Oliver surrounding her, arms tight around her like bands of iron, his chest and torso a muscled wall under her cheek, wrapped in her arms. Tried to recall the smell of his aftershave, subtle and somehow  _green_  (like foresty growing things; god, the man loved a theme.) Furrowed her brow with effort for trying to feel Oliver’s warmth encompassing her, his heartbeat thundering against hers, his refusal to let her go even as Digg crowded up to wait his turn. 

She  _tried_.

But she couldn’t quite remember what a hug like that felt like.

Couldn’t quite remember what  _safe_  or  _home_  felt like.

Couldn’t quite trust that she could let Oliver—or anyone—hold her like that again without feeling trapped, confined, threatened.

Wanted to.

And so she’d move on from there to telling them, in her head, the story of how she escaped, through cleverness and opportunity, all on her own. She’d tell them the story of what happened that awful June Friday night, and all the more awful days and nights that followed.

She’d explain.

She practiced making them understand her situation. In these scenarios she ran through, she always had to justify the choices she made. Where she cooperated and where she didn’t. Playing card games and cracking jokes with her captor. With  _Tommy_. The conversations and the questions and the—the casual touching. The decision to kiss him, to try to seduce him.  _Living_  with him now.

She was very much afraid that if— _when_ —she returned home, to her life, none of them would understand the choices she’d made or the ones she didn’t during her captivity. That they would ask why she hadn’t fought harder, struggled more, stayed unbendingly defiant.

They were all hard choices she made, gambling on the long game, on getting out and getting home, on  _surviving_. She couldn’t regret them. Wouldn’t. Not a single one.

And maybe no one would ask her to.

John, Oliver, Roy—all of them had lived through things, done things, made their own hard choices. Maybe they wouldn’t judge the shapes she twisted herself into to get out alive.

But she practiced in her head the scenarios where they did.

Because sometimes, she doubted.

But she refused to regret.


	18. Bookmark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity sleeps; Tommy doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just sliding in another prompted outtake Interlude.

Tommy looked up from the assault rifle he was taking apart on the coffee table and glanced towards the armchair; checking on Felicity periodically—ascertaining breathing, posture, body language, expression, position—had become a habitual motion, as thoughtless and reflexive as the expanding of his chest as he breathed.

This time, he stopped with his eyes on her, hands stilling on the rag he’d been oiling the gun with.

Felicity was curled in her chair— _her_  chair now—knees draped across the arm nearer the kitchen. Her socked feet hung, the toes of the left tucked shyly in the arch of the right. Her back was a soft curve across the seat cushion, shoulders shored up against the other chair arm, head dropped back against it. The book she had been reading rested closed against her stomach, and her face was turned away from him.

“Felicity?”

No response; just quiet, even, deep breathing.

She had fallen asleep.

Tommy sighed; so many thoughts and feelings warred in him at the realization. She shouldn’t be so comfortable with him. Shouldn’t be so unwary as to fall asleep out here in the open of the living area. And yet—and yet warmth coiled in his chest that she was so at ease with him only feet away. Warmth and a corkscrew of bitter guilt.

Lips thinning, he wiped his hands clean of any oil smudges and rose to his feet, shuffling around the coffee table to stand in front of the armchair.

“Felicity.”

No response. Not even a tensing muscle or subtle shift in breathing. She was deeply asleep.

Shaking his head, Tommy tapped two fingers firmly against Felicity’s shoulder and spoke her name again. Nothing. He shook her shoulder, leaned down to say her name closer. Still nothing.

“You are  _ridiculous_ ,” he muttered, faintly exasperated. And yet…

Guilt swarming up his throat already like a flight of moths, Tommy let the backs of his fingers graze down Felicity’s soft cheek, brushing her hair away from her face. She didn’t stir, and he swallowed thickly and curled his fingers into his palm.

It was for the better, he supposed, that she got her sleep. She would need it. And he rather imagined deep, full sleep didn’t likely come often to her, not here. Not in three months. Even less, in the last. He should let her rest.

The decision, then, was whether to be selfish. Whether to let her sleep here, uncomfortably slumped across the armchair, guaranteed to wake with a crick in her neck and a stiff back. Here, where he could keep watch over her directly, look up when he craved the reassuring rise and fall of her chest, the solidity of her presence.

Or he could do the kinder thing, and take her back to her own room to sleep comfortably behind a closed door under warm blankets. He’d noticed how much she loathed to be cold.

He’d had so few opportunities—and until very recently, so few  _urges_ —to be truly  _kind_  to her, without ulterior motivation or greater directive. That would be its own selfish indulgence.

Coming to a decision, Tommy sighed, feeling more at rest standing over Felicity and hearing the hush of air through her lungs than he had at any point in almost a week.

Wincing at his own foolishness, He bent and gently took hold of Felicity’s book—and with it, surprisingly, lifted her arm.

“What—?” He realized with a soft laugh that she had closed her finger between the pages, a makeshift bookmark.

Lips curling with warm amusement, He worked his finger into the spot hers had occupied and set her hand down over her stomach. Taking the book into the kitchen, he scrounged up an empty tea packet and folded it inside the book to mark Felicity’s place in the story.

Tommy returned to the living area and set the book on the end of the coffee table by the armchair. It looked strangely at home next to the disassembled assault rifle.

He turned again to Felicity, and with only a moment of hesitation, he bent and slid one arm under knees, the other beneath her shoulders. He lifted her with ease, and frowned. She had lost too much weight. He hated the reminder of exactly how much he had contributed to  _diminishing_  her.

But she rested in his arms, tucked against his chest, with complete ease, head rolling against his shoulder to tuck beneath his chin.

Tightening his grip more securely around her, Tommy carried her down the hall, lay her down on the bed, and tucked her beneath the blankets. She never woke, never stirred or roused. He lingered at the bedside and wondered how much accumulated exhaustion had caught up with her that she would sleep soundly through his hands on her. The thought tightened his gut with more guilt, chased by anger and self-loathing.

With effort, he left, and closed the door softly behind him.

Ignoring the lock panel, he returned to his guns, to the bright—and empty—living area, and settled himself for a long night’s watch.


	19. Who Waits Forever Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unable to wait any longer for Sara to arrive, Oliver, Diggle, and Roy prepare a bold move to—they hope—bring Felicity home.

Oliver shrugged into the green leather as, behind him, the club-entry foundry door clanged open. He did not raise his head, and he didn’t turn around. High heels tapped on the metal grating of the staircase and stopped, uncertain. The pause pulled his shoulders up tight, the skin all along his spine prickling with tension, blood thrumming heavy and insistent through every vein.

_soon soon soon soon soon **now**_

He could feel Diggle’s pointed stare drilling into the side of his head, and on his other side, pulling on his gloves, Roy muttered, “Here it comes.”

“Oliver?” Laurel’s tone was surprised, confused, and edged with suspicion. “I got your text, but it looks like you guys are heading out… what’s going on?”

Pulling in a steadying breath through his nose, every motion precise and calculated and narrowly focused, Oliver turned, tugging the zipper of his leathers up over his Under Armor. “We are heading out. That’s why we need you.”

He raised his eyes to her, hesitating at the top of the stairs with her hand on the rail and one pointed toe set on the first step. Hovering just at the fringes. Wanting to join the fray, and unsure of her welcome.

Oliver knew he’d have to deal with that, one way or another, and soon. But not tonight. Not now. There was no time for that now. He was hard muscle and honed sinew stretched so taut over his bones, under his skin, he felt his flesh might split if he moved too fast, too forceful, let go—there was no room in him now for patience or negotiation.

A line forming between her brows, Laurel ran her eyes over the three suited-up men—Oliver and Roy in green and red leather, John all in sturdy dark clothes and strapped visibly with at least two guns. “While I’m flattered, I’m not sure I’m qualified to play relay or whatever while you guys bust heads.” She waved a hand in the direction of Felicity’s tech setup. “I don’t know how to run—any of that.”

“We don’t need you to,” Digg broke in, soft but firm, while Oliver reflexively stiffened up, his entire left side prickling with too much awareness of Felicity’s empty chair. “We need a warm body here at base, just in case.”

Laurel set both feet on the top stair, cocked her hip and folded her arms. Eyes narrowing—not on Diggle, but on Oliver, she asked crisply, “In case of _what_?”

“Emergency,” snarked Roy, eyes rolling, and fitted his mask over his eyes.

Oliver pressed his lips tightly, and shot him an unimpressed look before returning his attention to Laurel. “In case anything goes wrong. In case of—anything.” The tip of his tongue swiped between his lips, finger chafing over thumb like he would strike sparks and light a fire to make them all move _faster_. “We have to be prepared for anything.”

“Ollie, drop the cryptic bullshit and start making sense, please,” Laurel snapped, brows arching pointedly.

Oliver huffed, inclining his head and feeling chastened in a way that echoed directly back to childhood. The reminder laid on him like a cool balm, not settling him, but tightening the leash without choking the collar. Sharing the storied look he cut her, Laurel softened.

Oliver did not. Could not. He was carved from marble, and if he didn’t ruthlessly control every move he made, every breath he took, choose the cut of every line of expression on his face—he would explode, violently and unstoppably.

So he offered Laurel a short, clipped nod, and took a deep breath. “Lyla—”

“My ex-wife-slash-pregnant girlfriend-slash-secret agent,” Digg cut in wryly, raising a hand for Laurel’s attention. Her head pulled back, lips parting, brows slowly rising at the context that clarified so little.

Roy snorted, and shuffled behind Oliver to check the snaps on the bow cases.

Pursing his lips, Oliver rolled his eyes heavenward, jaw muscle jumping with hurried irritation. “ _Lyla_ works for an organization with… resources. And she’s found a nearby location with confirmed League of Assassins activity and occupancy.”

Laurel stared at him again in that itchingly uncomfortable way, the pinch of her brows and roundness of her eyes suggesting she recognized too little of what she saw as she looked at him. “And what is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

Oliver’s blood rose like a cresting wave; for a moment it rushed in his ears loud as the ocean— _hurryhurryhurryhurry_ —drowning out everything, Diggle’s quick sigh, the creak of Roy’s leathers as he turned to face Laurel, the plastic rattle of the handles of each bowcase hanging from his hands. It obliterated Laurel in front of him in a haze of red-white static, swayed him forward with tidal force, one boot scuffing the floor—turning him infinitesimally towards the door to the alley.

Oliver took a breath.

“Lyla believes that if the League is behind Felicity’s disappearance, this could either be where they’re holding her, or have information on where she is.”

Diggle’s hand clamped on Oliver’s bicep, and Oliver set his weight back on his heels. Catching Laurel’s eye, John spoke softly but firmly. “It’s a decommissioned Air Force base, and there’s zero official documentation of it being reactivated by any government or affiliated entity. But activity there started up at the beginning of June.”

“Barely _weeks_ before Felicity vanished,” Roy clarified, Laurel’s attention switching to him. “Seems a little more than coincidental. So we’re gonna go knock on their door.”

Laurel’s eyes widened, her hand tightening on the stair rail.

“We are going to find Felicity,” Oliver raised his voice over Roy’s, grim and implacable, as if he could will it into truth. “We are going to bring her home.”

“Oliver, no,” Laurel shook her head, quickly descending the remaining stairs. He clenched his jaw, drawing up to his full height, but she stalked forward to stand in front of him unconcerned. “Sara’s coming back! She _told_ you not to make a move before she got here, this is exactly what she said not to do.”

Outrage shuddered down Oliver’s spine, through his limbs. Digg’s hand on his arm tightened. “It has been over a _week_ , Laurel! Sara should have been here by now. Have you even heard from her since?”

Laurel flinched, lips flattening. “No, but I—”

“But, _nothing_.” Oliver slashed a hand through the air, cutting her off. “Sara should have been here by now, and even if something hasn’t happened to keep her from reaching Starling, I—I can’t wait any longer!”

“If you go in there blind, without whatever Sara knows or suspects about the League, it could be suicide.” Laurel grabbed hold of Oliver’s wrist, staring hard up into his face, but he just pressed his lips together, unmoved. Laurel turned her gaze to John. “Digg, tell him! Moving on the League of Assassins without Sara is just too dangerous. She’s coming, she just needs more time. You have to _wait_.”

Diggle dropped his hand from Oliver’s shoulder and shook his head at Laurel apologetically. “Sorry, Laurel, but I’m with Oliver on this one. It’s good intel. Either Felicity might be there, or something at this base could point the way to where we find her. The longer we wait, the more we risk.”

Laurel raked her eyes incredulously over the three of them, lined up and immovable as a wall. Roy just shrugged when she tried to pin him with her stare. “Are you telling me none of you look at this and think ‘trap’?”

Sighing through his nose, Oliver looked down at Laurel’s fingers locked around his wrist, her rings biting through the leather of his glove with her grip. Gently, he pried her hand free. “It doesn’t _matter_ , Laurel.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” she spat, glaring at him hot and angry. “If this goes wrong because you were too stupid and stubborn to wait for Sara, if you don’t come back and if I have to—” she bit her words off with a click, jerking her hands away from him and taking a step back.

“It doesn’t _matter_ , Laurel!” Oliver hissed, exasperated, impatient, vibrating in his skin, in his bones, the longer he just _stood_ here when he should be on his way. “We’ve already waited too long! Not just for Sara! Not just for a week. It’s been _months_ too long! You don’t know everything that could be happening to Felicity, everything they might have already done to her, all the things she could be enduring right now, this second, the next one, every _goddamn_ minute it takes us to get out this door and to where she is!” He was crowding Laurel back towards the stairs, shouting at her. Diggle said his name, a warning, and Oliver hardly heard it. “I do! _I. Do_.”

He slapped a palm against his chest, every single scar he bore—flames boiling, searing the small of his back; puncturing needles on his shoulder, his chest; his mother’s bullet in his shoulder; teeth ripping at his side—prickling to life with the impact. Laurel paled, seeing something in his eyes that he had tried _so hard_ to contain, to keep away from her, from everyone who had ever called him “Ollie.”

“I know,” he rumbled, low and insistent. “I don’t just imagine it, it’s like—it’s like I’m _watching it happen_ to her. Over and over, every day. I can’t keep doing that. I can’t keep _waiting_.”

Drawing in a long, shuddering breath, he straightened out of his loom over Laurel, took a step back, consciously lowering his shoulders, opening his fists. He looked away, then up at her from beneath his brows, sorry yet unapologetic. John and Roy both stood a step back at either shoulder—ready to pull him back.

Laurel gulped, chin trembling once before stiffening, jaw squaring into harsh lines. Her brows were dark, flat slashes over eyes at once spooked and remorseful. She opened her mouth, closed it. Cleared her throat. Rasped, thin and raw and thready, “I’m sorry.”

Oliver only nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. “So am I. If Sara—if she arrives before we come back… tell her I’m sorry. But I can’t ask Felicity to pay any more of the cost of our wasted time.”

He sighed, turned and took the larger bow case from Roy, met Diggle’s eye and nodded. John nodded in return, and pulled a set of keys from his pocket and passed them to Roy. Oliver shifted his body towards the alley door, turned his head, and held Laurel’s gaze one last time. She stood at the foot of the stairs, arms wrapped loosely around her waist, expression grim and resigned.

“If this goes well, we should be back by late tonight.”

Laurel chafed loosely at her arms, running her eyes quickly around the cluttered, strange space of the foundry. “And if it doesn’t?”

Oliver waited, for a long moment, for the right words, for reassurances or instructions to come to him while Diggle and Roy gathered up their remaining gear and filed out the door. He waited for the words to come even as Laurel raised her gaze to his.

They didn’t come.

So he hefted his bow case, turned and walked out the door. He didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dunn Dunn DUNNNNNN
> 
> But really, expect the next update to the main story to come before the month is out. :)
> 
> Edit 12/10/15: Looking to see why you got update notifications? I took Tumblr prompts and wrote some out-of-order outtakes filling in the blanks of the story already told, so the new chapters are between older ones. The new updates are chapters 12, 13, and 17.


	20. So Glad We've Almost Made It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver, Diggle, and Roy go to bring Felicity home at last—and find far more than they bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the very last Interlude. From here on out all storylines converge in part 3, Way Down We Go, coming soon. ;)
> 
> Keep your eyes peeled for an After Credits teaser for what's in store for Olvier, Felicity, Tommy, and the others in part 3, added here to Interludes tomorrow night!

Roy drove.

It was as much strategic distribution of tasks as it was preserving mission integrity. It allowed Oliver and Digg to run strategy during the journey, cover all details and contingencies over and over—but it also kept Oliver from blowing the entire op before they ever got there by getting them pulled over for excessive speeding.

As it was, it was all he could not to turn and snap at Roy to drive _faster, damn it_.

_almost almost almost **hurry hurry hurry**_

“Oliver, man.” Oliver snapped his head up as Digg reached across the bench seats in the back of the van to firmly tap his knee; Oliver frowned down at his right foot, grinding down on the floor like he was crushing a gas pedal beneath the sole of his boot. Diggle sighed, his eyes weary, mouth grim. “You have to remember she might not be there. Hell, if she _is_ there, it’ll be a damn lucky miracle.”

Oliver clenched his jaw tight, jerking his head to the side to stare out the windshield, the whole world beyond his reach, outside the beam of the headlights unwinding the road ahead into the dark. “I know.”

But she might be.

But he couldn’t say it out loud.

Hoping for things was the fastest way to destroy them, in Oliver’s experience.

Digg sighed again. “We should get there an hour or two ahead of entry, give us plenty of time to scope out the perimeter, keep our exits clear. Lyla’s got an ARGUS asset inside the base, part of the contracted staff.” Oliver met John’s eye and nodded, hands dangling between his knees as he leaned forward, fingers chafing restlessly. “She’s risking a lot giving us this intel. Her asset will likely be burned after our infiltration, so the way in is the most she can do for us. There won’t be any backup from ARGUS.”

Scoffing, Oliver shook his head. “For the best. The last thing we need is Waller catching wind of any of this. Last thing Lyla needs, too.”

Snorting, Digg leaned back into the wall of the van, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck as he shook his head. “She’s not a fan of keeping her head down, but with the baby on the way…” His eyes rolled heavenward. “As it is, I still had to talk her out of coming with us.”

“Right,” Roy drawled from the front, “because what’s a little League of Assassins infiltration in the third trimester?”

John laughed dryly. “Hard to say if it’s the pregnancy hormones or the desk assignment that’s making her so bloodthirsty.”

Swallowing hard, Oliver allowed himself a small smile. “I think that might just be _Lyla_.”

Lacing his hands behind the crown of his head, Diggle raised his eyebrows, smirking fondly. “You’re not wrong there.”

Tucking his lips, Oliver bobbed his chin, and they subsided into a brief silence.

Just three sets of lungs breathing— _should be four, should be a voice in our ears_ —and the dry hush of the highway under the van’s tires.

Expelling a harsh breath through his nose, Oliver sat up and stared hard at the back of Roy’s head. “How far out are we?”

“Dude, chill,” Roy snapped back. “Asking ‘are we there yet’ every fifteen minutes doesn’t raise the speed limit.”

Unamused, Oliver curled his hands into fists, the leather of his gloves creaking satisfyingly as he glared at Roy’s head. Roy didn’t turn around, but the van did pick up speed. Incrementally.

 _Not enough_.

“Oliver.”

Sighing, Oliver blinked slowly and turned to meet John’s eye. His face writ in subtle lines of sympathy and patience, Digg shook his head but quirked one side of his mouth in a rueful smile. Oliver braced for another reminder, lecture, sermon about patience and hope and the high odds of disappointment—

—but instead, Digg laced his fingers between his knees, leaned forward, and asked, “How’s Thea?”

Oliver’s brows twitched in surprise. Distraction, then.

The van bumped over some crack in the road, and Oliver’s jaw tightened, then slowly eased. Maybe Diggle had the right idea.

Scrubbing a hand over the back of his head, Oliver sighed. “Hard to say. She still doesn’t actually respond to my texts or voicemails. Just sends postcards and photos of wherever she’s running around. Occasionally texts me updates, just never answers my replies.” He licked his lips, unease and guilt and many-layered sorrow twisting a greasy knot in his gut. “I—I get it, she needs space. I _told_ her to get out. To live a life away from all of… this.”

Digg sighed, nodding understandingly. “Still rough. You tell her about Felicity?”

Oliver shrugged, then shook his head. “I didn’t want to drag her back into all of this. As long as I know she’s out there, safe and going about her life, I don’t—” He cut off with a tight press of lips, and sighed through his nose. “I don’t have the right to pull her back home just for my own comfort.”

Running his tongue over his teeth behind his lips, Diggle nodded tersely. He’d made his disagreement with Oliver pushing Thea away to “protect” her known, but he understood why Oliver had done it, why he believed Thea deserved to be free of her brother’s shadowed second life. Oliver was just grateful it was an argument they’d only had to have once.

From the driver’s seat, Roy quietly asked, “She’s—she’s doing okay, though?” He cleared his throat. “Thea?”

Oliver glanced at him and let his irritation with the younger man slip away. Roy wasn’t especially adept at _hiding_ the guilt and misery he carried for his part in Thea’s departure from Starling. For all that he’d clearly been worried Oliver would blame him, when Roy told him about Thea’s discovery of Roy’s affiliation with the Arrow, Roy did a more than thorough job kicking his own ass over it. In the end, however, Oliver couldn’t have been angry with him.

It was just another way Oliver had tainted Thea’s life with his own sins and secrets.

“Yeah,” Oliver answered softly after a long moment. “Yeah, I think she’s doing okay. The pictures she sends, the places she’s visiting… she seems happy.” As much as she _could_ be, after Oliver had cost their mother her life, cost them their home, their family legacy. So many mistakes, and Thea paid for more than she should ever have had to. “She’s… safe. That’s what’s important.”

Roy was quiet for a long moment. “Right.”

Clearing his throat, Digg intervened in the next dragging silence. “Roy, you remember your part?”

Roy obliged with a put-upon sigh. “ _Yes_. For the millionth time, yes. Lyla’s mole gives the signal, you two ninja into the ninja camp, I wait out here to play getaway driver-slash-lookout, and keep an ear on comms for if shit hits the fan and you two need your asses rescued.”

Eyes rolling heavenward, Oliver shook his head. “And if either of us gives you the code word?”

Roy grumbled something in the front seat, his hands on the wheel curling with tension.

“Roy,” Diggle spoke with soft steel. “If Oliver or I see the situation as too grim and gives the code word, what do you do?”

Roy sighed harshly, clearly displeased. “I cut and run like a coward, leaving you both to death and/or torture. I make contact with Lyla, who does her best to assess if either of you is still alive and whether or not retrieving you is a _viable option_.” He turned his head to scowl over his shoulder at them. “I hate this part of the plan, so we’re clear. It’s bullshit.”

“It’s worst-case scenario,” Digg answered calmly. “It is by definition not ideal. It sucks by design, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to follow the damn plan if we get that spectacularly fucked over. Got it?”

“I got it,” Roy groused, snapping off a sarcastic salute and returning his attention to the road. “It’s still bullshit. Neither of you would leave me behind.”

“You’re not leaving us behind,” Oliver cut over him tersely. “You’re retreating and calling in reinforcements. _Nobody_ is getting left behind.”

No one. Not _any_ of them.

They’d already left Felicity in the cold for far too long.

Oliver wasn’t losing _anyone else_.

—

It was chaos.

Oliver had, in his time, gotten all too used to plans going sideways, luck running out, and Murphy’s Law ruling supreme over every operation or situation he’d ever been involved in.

Especially when the stakes were this high. When he was this invested, and had so much to lose.

But almost from the moment he and Diggle had breached the defunct air force base, everything had begun to spiral out of control.

They had split up quickly, Digg following Lyla’s asset towards a restricted area the maintenance worker had promised access to, and Oliver continuing in the direction of what their inside man had described as barracks.

He had set off with hood drawn up and bow held tight at his side, fingertips endlessly itching with readiness to draw and nock an arrow.

He hadn’t made it two hallways in before Digg’s voice crackled in his ear that they had been spotted, their asset down.

And then the explosion.

It had seemed to come from the opposite end of the facility, but the blast shook the walls and set alarms shrieking, emergency lights flashing.

On instinct, he had headed as best he could in the direction of the explosion.

It had taken little time to get turned around in the warren of corridors, and less time than that for the first assassin to find him.

He had been confused and stunned by the assassin’s dress—black and gray paramilitary fatigues, combat boots. None of the hallmark black silks or masks, no hoods or scarves. But the swords and knives, the fluid grace and dry-ice lethality was pure League.

Something didn’t add up, but as he frantically traded brutal blows to take his opponent down, there was no time for Oliver to speculate.

From there, it had been a nonstop fight for his life though a progression of halls, deeper and deeper into what was clearly a section of the facility dedicated to living and training.

What was the League _doing_ here? How could they possibly be holding Felicity in this place?

 _Nothing made sense_.

The fire spread quickly, and soon Oliver was battling through smoke and flame as much as highly-trained killers. Communication with Digg was rough and spotty, broken by static and interrupted by the noise of fighting and struggle.

“ _Oliver_ ,” Diggle’s voice crackled in his ear, “ _what’s your status? What are the numbers?_ ”

Stepping over the assassin he had just knocked unconscious, Oliver stalked grimly towards the bend in the hallway ahead. “I’m clear, still searching. Any sign?”

“ _Negative_.”

He clenched his jaw tightly, nostrils flaring with the acrid odor of smoke, answering flames of panicked frustration rising in his chest. “I’ve met two assassins so far, seen four personnel; they didn’t interfere. You?”

“ _This isn’t right_ ,” John mused as if to himself. Then, to Oliver, “ _Two on this side also. We were spotted, there should have been more opposition than this._ ”

Oliver pressed against the wall at the corner, readying an arrow.

“ _Oliver… something’s not right, but…_ ”

“Diggle,” he snapped impatiently.

“ _I think… I think she was here._ ”

Oliver’s eyes widened, the smoke clumping into a gritty knot in his throat, arrow dipping towards the ground. “What? _Was_?”

“ _The restricted sector our asset led me to is a cell block. Hallway full of empty cells, all stripped like they cleared out. Oliver, I’m not an expert, but if I had to long-term hold somebody with a lot of dangerous tech skill… I think it’d look a lot like this._ ”

He couldn’t breathe.

The heat and the smoke were smothering him, closing his throat and constricting his lungs.

_gone gone missed her **too slow**_

“ _Oliver_.” He realized Digg had said his name once already. “ _Do we retreat_?”

_missed her lost her **find her**_

Oliver took one clean breath.

“No. Not yet. If she was here, there could be information to lead us to where they took her.” He glanced back at the assassin on the floor, still out cold. Felicity had been here. These people had _taken_ Felicity from him—from them. They had kept her in a cell for god knew how long, and done god knew what to her. They’d designed a hole to make her specifically helpless. Turn back now? Let her slip away from him—further—again? “I’m pushing in further. Diggle. Are you with me?”

There was a beat of silence. Then, grimly, “ _I’m in a basement, Oliver. They buried our girl underground, and from what’s left of this place… this is some PsyOps shit. They tried to make her into less than a person. I am with you, one hundred percent. Let’s bring Felicity home_.”

Determination spreading cool and steely through his chest, down his spine, Oliver raised his bow, nocked his arrow, and turned the corner.

—

Grunting, Oliver twisted the shaft of the arrow piercing the thigh of the assassin he was grappling with, watching the man’s face pale, his hand around Oliver’s throat slackening.

Teeth bared, Oliver slammed his forehead into the assassin’s, and with a cry, the man went down, nose broken and blood gushing down over his mouth.

Oliver stood over him, catching his breath, coughing on the smoke. The assassin didn’t get up.

The other, on the floor to his left, may never get up again, judging by the spread of the pool of blood beneath him.

“Diggle,” Oliver rasped, pressing his fingertips to his collar to reactivate his mic. “Status.”

“ _Damn it,_ ” Diggle hissed; then, “ _Oliver, the fire’s spreading too fast. If I don’t get out now, I’m going to be trapped._ ”

Eyes sweeping over the large room the trio of assassins he’d run into had backed him into—flames gnawing hungrily up the interior wall, smoke and fire chewing across the ceiling, licking slowly over the floor to the far side of the room—Oliver clenched his jaw and briefly shut his eyes. “Do it.” He paused, cradling that last ember of hope in his chest. “Did you find anything?”

John hesitated. “ _No. Oliver…_ ”

He gritted his teeth, and that ember went cold, a hard, painful lump in place of his heart. Sweat slicking his temples and itching at the edges of the mask, he bent and picked his bow up from the floor. “Pull out. I didn’t get much further either. Regroup at the—”

Across the long room, a door slammed open, and a figure tumbled through dressed in the black and gray fatigues of an assassin. The flames in the center space roared higher with the inrush of air from the hall, and Oliver swore, squinting through the heat and glare and cautiously reaching back to pull an arrow from his quiver.

Empty. “Damn.”

He cast his gaze quickly around his feet for dropped arrows, flicking his eyes back up to keep sight of his target—

“No.” Oliver’s eyes went wide, the floor seeming to tilt under his boots. “It can’t be.”

“ _Oliver_?” Diggle’s voice rang down the wire to him, strange and distant. “ _Oliver, come in!_ ”

She had stopped halfway across the room. Dressed in that black and gray, hair in a bedraggled braid, the wrong color down to her ears. Her glasses were missing. There was a gun in her hands, a _gun_ —

But it was her.

It was _her_.

The sight of her slammed into his chest like a harpoon, and he stumbled back a step from the impact, agonizing relief, soaring _hope_ radiating from a heart that roared back to life fiercer than the fire surrounding them.

She stood and stared back at the door she’d come through, her expression through the wavering heat between them torn by some indecision. Suddenly, her jaw squared—she took a step back towards that door—

—Oliver stepped towards her like she pulled him on a tether—

—she was leaving, she was _leaving_ , she was _right there_ and she hadn’t seen him and she was _leaving_ —

“Felicity!”

Diggle was shouting in his ear, but it was all noise. Oliver’s entire _world_ narrowed down to Felicity Smoak, beautiful, resilient, _remarkable_ Felicity Smoak, only a handful of yards away—

She stopped. Froze.

Oliver shuffled another step closer, locking his jaw against the intense heat of the fire.

Felicity turned her head, and the moment her eyes found his it was as if some numbing, smothering insulation was ripped away from him, and everything soared into screaming color and sound and sensation in a way he’d hardly noticed had been _gone_.

Her lips moved silently. Then, “Oliver!!”

“Don’t move, I’m coming to get you!” he shouted back, but the flames along the inside wall blazed higher, roaring furiously, drowning him out.

Felicity flinched from it, looking at him with fierce panic. “Oliver!”

Her eyes darted around, and Oliver feared she would try to cross through the fire to reach him.

His leathers would protect him, but her—

“ _Oliver, god damn it, answer me right now you son of a bitch, what is happening!_ ” Diggle snarled in his ear, panting like he was running, and Oliver realized his partner had no idea what was going on.

“It’s Felicity, she’s here, she’s _right_ here, I just—everything’s on fire and I can’t _get_ to her—”

“ _Felicity? She’s here? Fucking Christ, I’m on my way!_ ”

Oliver filled his lungs with stinging, smoke-choked air to warn Felicity off trying to cross the room.

The far door slammed open again, a man in black and gray stumbling over the threshold and calling—“Felicity!”

Felicity turned to stare at the man—assassin? another prisoner?

Oliver’s eyes snapped _up_ away from the newcome as something crackled and groaned—

— _the ceiling over Felicity’s head smoldering, bowing—COLLAPSING_ —

“No—”

“ _Move_!!”

The man in the door threw himself at Felicity—Oliver raised his bow, again, cursing as his fingers again pulled no arrow—and crashed into her, sending them both staggering out of the way just as the ceiling dumped burning debris where she had stood seconds before.

Oliver lurched forward another half step, every muscle _screaming_ with panic. “Felicity!”

Felicity and the other man stood clinging, tangled, and confusion and rage bubbled in Oliver’s guts, but Felicity wasn’t shoving away, didn’t appear frightened or threatened, but they turned their heads as one to stare at him and the man—the man—

—that _man_ —

“No. No, it’s not possible, no, it isn’t _possible_ ,” Oliver gasped, his lungs collapsing, airless with shock.

Black hair, that face, those blue _eyes_ —eyes Oliver had known as well as his own, for so long a better and clearer mirror than any reflection—eyes he had watched turn dull and glassy and lightless, eyes he’d watched close _forever_ —

Before, the world had tilted beneath Oliver’s feet; now, it fell away. Everything went gray, tilting sickly; for a brief moment, the roar of the fire muffled, muted, as all color, all sound, all _life_ fled to concentrate in the impossible figure of Tommy Merlyn.

Above, the ceiling groaned another threat and the world snapped viciously back into joint; Oliver gasped, painful, strangled—

He could hear their voices, but not make out the words, Felicity’s high and strident, eyes darting to Oliver again and again. She strained against Tommy’s hands—

— _Tommy_ —

—as if to run towards Oliver, one of her hands on Tommy’s wrist like she’d drag him with her, but Tommy—

— ** _Tommy_** —

—tugged at her, eyes on the ceiling, pulled her with him, towards the fire exit. He took Felicity’s hand and _yanked_.

Another crumbled chunk of ceiling fell, inches behind their heels.

Oliver cried out, stare fixed on them, one hand raising as they moved farther from his reach.

Felicity threw him one more desperate look over her shoulder, she and Tommy— _Tommy_!—steps from the door—

Tommy cried out, buckling and nearly pulling Felicity down as he stumbled, clutching at his side. Felicity screamed Tommy’s name.

_Tommy, Tommy, it’s Tommy, it’s Tommy!_

Oliver’s head whipped around, and the door was filled once more by a figure in black and gray—the third assassin Oliver had battled into this very room. Her face was cut in sharp fury, eyes like daggers locked on Tommy, and as Oliver watched, she raised her hand, steel glinting with firelight in her fingers.

Oliver’s eyes shot, as if time slowed to a molasses crawl, to Felicity attempting to bear a staggering, stumbling Tommy to the exit—to the assassin’s arm, lifting the blade for another throw.

Swearing, Oliver bent his knees and whirled, his hand flashing out and grasping the shaft of the arrow in the downed assassin’s thigh. With bared teeth, he _tore_ the arrow from the unconscious man’s flesh, blood flying in scarlet beads as he spun, fluidly raising his bow, nocking the arrow, sighting down the shaft—

—he drew back his arm—

— _released_ —

Seconds. It took only seconds, and the arrow flew true and straight, embedding brutally in the shoulder of the assassin across the room. She cried out in fury and stumbled backward out of the doorway.

Lowering his bow, Oliver turned his head—and the fire exit door clanged shut on fresh night air that fed the fire higher, Tommy and Felicity gone.

 _Gone_.

Instantly aware again of Diggle—and now Roy’s—voices barking in his ear, Oliver stared for only a second more before he turned and charged for the door back into the hall on his side of the room. “Diggle, Roy! There was an assassin in pursuit, I engaged. Felicity made it out, she’s outside! There was—there was a man with her. He—”

He bit off his panic, his confusion; swallowed it down in a lump.

 _No time for that_.

 ** _Tommy_**.

“ _I think I see them!_ ” Roy snapped, voice tight with adrenaline and confusion. “ _There’s a car—get your asses to the van, now! They’re making a break for it._ ”

Oliver charged back through the halls, eyes wildly casting for an exit through the haze and smoke and shrilling alarms.

He burst through an emergency door into bracingly clear night air, spotting a dark-dressed figure racing across the ground ahead of him.

Digg.

Gritting his teeth, Oliver ran faster, reaching their breach in the fencing just after John and scraping through. Side by side, they pounded across the access road to where Roy was waiting with the black van, hidden in the dark field.

Almost there, there was a cacophonous crash of screaming, tearing metal, peeling tires, and Oliver and Diggle whirled to see a heavy duty black Jeep, headlights off, jerk and skid onto the pavement several yards away, engine gunning, a curling hole in the fence behind it.

Staring after the Jeep, Oliver breathed, “Shit. Shit. That’s them, that’s Felicity. It’s—”

Diggle’s hand clamped around his elbow, jerking sharply. “Oliver, _move_. We can catch up, but we have to move _now_.”

Shaking himself, Oliver followed Digg the remaining strides to the van, the back doors gaping open, waiting for them. They threw themselves inside and hauled the doors shut.

“Hang onto your balls,” Roy shouted from the driver’s seat.

The van shuddered violently into motion, the tires spinning in the dirt and grass before jerkily launching them forward. Roy turned sharply onto the road, bumping off the shoulder as Diggle and Oliver tried to cling to the seats, jolting and banging into the walls.

“Lights off,” Diggle commanded sharply. “Don’t spook them.”

“I got it, I got it,” Roy muttered through clenched teeth, leaning forward over the steering wheel.

The van steadied now on the road, Oliver and Diggle pulled themselves into the bench seats along the van walls. Panting, Oliver slid his hood back and let his head fall back against the cool metal of the wall. Sweat and soot streaked down his face and neck. Across from him, Digg looked little better, a rip in the left shoulder of his jacket dampened by blood.

Leaning over his knees, Diggle met Oliver’s stare, his brows knotted tightly. “It was really Felicity? You saw her?”

For just one _brilliant_ second, Oliver relived that first sight of her, unutterable joy and crippling relief and a _need_ to reach for her, pull her into his arms, that burned hotter and fiercer than any fire devouring the base.

Lips flickering in a helpless, brief grin, Oliver nodded. “It was her. It’s _Felicity_.”

“I’ll be _damned_ ,” John breathed, sitting up straight, mouth slack and eyes wide. He ran one hand over his close-cropped hair. “I’ll be damned. We found her.”

“And the guy?” Roy asked sharply from the front. “The guy with her, we need to worry about him?”

Head turned towards Roy, Oliver opened his mouth—and nothing came out.

 _Tommy_.

“Oliver,” Digg was leaning forward again, face tightened back down in alert concern. “Who was with her?”

Oliver stared at him, some invisible vise slowly constricting his chest, threatening to splinter his ribs with the _impossible_ weight of what he had seen.

“Oliver?”

Finally:

“Tommy,” Oliver blurted, his own voice distant and small with shock and disbelief. “It—it was Tommy.”

Digg’s head snapped back as if Oliver had slapped him. He blinked rapidly. “Tom—Tommy _Merlyn_?”

Oliver could only stare at him.

“What?” Roy asked incredulously. “Merlyn’s dead kid?”

“He’s dead, Oliver.” Diggle’s voice was firm, but the cant of his eyebrows was a question. “Tommy is _dead_.”

Oliver swallowed hard, but his voice seemed locked in his throat.

“Oliver, Tommy Merlyn is _dead_ ,” Digg insisted. Then, slowly, doubtfully, “Right?”

Oliver had no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much. For everything.


	21. Better Watch Your Back (Might Take Your Life)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;) See you darlings in part 3...

Thea posed with pursed lips and a peace sign, angling her camera to carefully show the slice of white-sand beach and sparkling blue ocean behind her before pressing her thumb over the camera button. The shutter snapped, and she lowered the phone to critically examine the shot.

Not her best, admittedly, a little too duckface, but Oliver was hardly likely to care. Squinting, she frowned at the beach behind her in the photo, at the water that was just a little _too_ crystal-clear Caribbean blue. Selecting a filter that put a little bit of a yellow tinge over everything, darkening the water—and casting her skin an unfortunate sallow, but sacrifices had to be made to present the image of carefree traveler her brother was expecting—Thea added “welcome to miami” in the caption and hit send.

Seconds later, Oliver texted back: _looks great. are you visiting the dearden beach house?_

Thea stared at the question mark with flattened lips. She knew she would eventually have to respond to him, to call him, something. The ruse would need more scaffolding than unanswered texts and intermittent postcards or else it risked collapsing in on itself.

She just couldn’t. Not yet.

Not with everything she knew, everything she’d learned, everything she still had to _do_. Oliver’s voice in her ear—and having to lie to him in her own voice—was a complication she just wasn’t ready for.

“Thea. Are you ready?”

Blinking her whole awareness back to the present—all too conscious even in her distraction of the sand crunching softly under bare feet, the presence at her back drawing nearer—Thea drew a steadying breath and locked her phone screen.

Setting her phone down inside one of the shoes she’d taken off, she turned around with a knife-sharp sliver of a smile.

Malcolm smiled back, just as cutting and just as dangerous. “Are you going to make me ask you twice? I would have thought you’d learned _that_ lesson already.”

She carried that lesson as a thin pink scar curving from the inside of her right elbow to the outside of her wrist.

Thea looked at Malcolm— _her father_ —and thought of her mother, pressured and threatened and manipulated into the dark, pushed to the edge, all the way to a wooded clearing at the end of a sword.

Thought of Tommy, who no matter what had always been important to her, always looked out for her, who had loved her as his sister without anyone or anything ever telling him he was supposed to. Thought of his body interred under words made lie by a sneer on a train platform—

 _“—he lacked the conviction, the strength to pull the trigger—_ ”

She thought of Oliver, lost for five years, and all those scars he came back with—and those just the ones she’d seen. Thought of how he had _died_ , and _why_ , and how the man who returned to her was never going to be the big brother she had lost, not ever again.

She thought of Robert Queen. The man who had raised her, given her his name, called her his princess, and made her feel like it was—like _all_ of it was—true. The man who had helped her with math homework and come running back from a business trip to kiss better a broken arm.

Her _daddy_.

Stronger. She had to get _stronger_.

Holding Malcolm’s gaze, Thea leaned down and wrapped her hand around the hilt of the sword buried point-first in the soft white sand in front of her. Bracing her feet, she raised the blade and let it bisect her view of her teacher.

“I’m ready.”


End file.
